[FIC] Bent (1/1)
Title: Bent
Authors: diana_lucifera & tersichore
Pairing: Gen, Wincest in future parts
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: panic attacks, ptsd
Summary: Pissing Dean off is the real most dangerous game.
Notes: This is officially the LAST tagfic! Starting next week, we'll be departing from canon completely and begin posting "Father's Gun," the big damn sequel! Yay!!
Previous Fic | Brother's Blood Masterpost
For all that hunting weighs on Sam - leaves it’s fingerprints in nightmares and daydreams and long, sullen broods staring out the window of the Impala, fingering the rosary twined in the binding of Dad’s journal as his mouth works, his mind tangles, tries to deal with the crap they go through on a daily basis - Dean’s never really had trouble with it.
Loneliness? Sure, at least until Sammy got back in the saddle and made that a thing of the past.
Regret? Of course. Hard not to feel guilty when every mistake you make could mean another innocent person, another mother or sister or daughter, on the slab, dead and gone and leaving a family going through hell, all ‘cause you weren’t good enough, weren’t smart enough, didn’t work fast enough.
But all the crap? The bloody, gory, awful shit they shovel day in and day out? It's never really stuck in Dean’s brain as nightmare material before. Not the same way it did for Sammy, anyway.
At least, not until a few weeks after Sammy’s little psychic awakening in Michigan, right around the time his brother stopped twitching at loud noises, reaching for things gingerly, carefully, like he was scared that they were gonna explode, he grabbed at 'em fast enough, which is ridiculous, ‘cause as far as Sammy’s little hidden talent goes? They’ve seen a whole lot of nothin’ ever since he redecorated the Miller’s living room in Early American shrapnel.
Dean is enjoying the lack of freaky on their doorstep, the way Sammy is slowly relaxing as any and all evidence that he can see the future or destroy shit with his mind fades to memory and history and the cramped, crabbed notes in the back of their journal that Sam only makes when he thinks Dean’s distracted, too wrapped up in hitting on girls in bars or researching their next job or showing his baby some love under the hood to notice Sam hunched over their slowly growing compendium of freaky.
Quietly adding himself to their personal account of things that go bump in the night.
Dean would rip the pages out, would tear them up and burn them and then fucking salt the ashes, but the last time he caught Sam, found him making notes on himself like he was one of the monsters they hunt, the first and last time he's actually moved to stop him, Sammy’d snatched the book away, called veto power of all goddamn things and used his goddamn gorilla arms to hold the thing out of reach until he’d talked Dean around, got him to agree that the notes could stay, that knowing all they could about the psychic kids and the thing that killed Mom and Jess was important, that solving this case was more important than Dean never having to see Sam’s name and Max’s on the same page, like they were the same… anything.
Like they had anything in common at all.
And they don’t have any leads on Dad or the thing that got Mom and Jess, the thing that’s somehow weirdly wrapped up in Sammy’s spoonbending, just the road and hunting and each other, and on the one hand, it’s frustrating, looking and looking and coming up with nothing.
But on the other, it’s the Impala. It’s horizons and Hemingway.
It's the same five albums and Sammy in the passenger seat and leads that may or may not be jobs, just diners and highway and salt and burns and Sammy slowly, slowly unwinding from the mess he was in Michigan, no dreams or powers or premonitions to weigh him down, and that, more than anything, has got them both easier than they’ve been in a long while, trucking across the country, chasing cases that turn out to be small fry hauntings or nothing at all, just a direction to drive, sun-warmed asphalt under their wheels and wind in their faces, sneaking in the cab of the Impala and toying with Sam’s hair as Dean thumbs Metallica into the tape deck, shoving their box of audiobooks at Sam and telling him to pick something that doesn’t suck by the end of Master of Puppets.
And it’s not until some mook named Albert Jenkins disappears in Minnesota that Dean learns what it is to have all your worst nightmares come to life, to play out in living color and broad daylight, to fall and fade and follow you into sleep long after you’ve shoved a knife in their ribs and given them a couple of slugs to the face for good measure.
Because Dean is gone for a minute.
One. Fucking. Minute.
Just long enough to take a leak and shake it off, check that he’s still a pretty son of a bitch while he’s washing up, but that’s long enough. Long enough for him to come out of the bar, to see that damn journal in the parking lot and know, know that this is a case and something is snatching people and whatever the fuck that something is, it just snatched Sam.
It got him just like that bloodsucking bastard got Dean in Louisiana, just like him, right down to the fucking parking lot, and the memories, the soul-shaking, blood-freezing thought of Sammy in that cage, pale and dirty, trapped knee to elbow by dirty, bloody rebar- Sammy going through two weeks of torture in a motherfucking basement- Sammy with that fucker's fangs in his neck, at his wrist, being bled out slow and getting weaker and weaker, lost and losing strength and losing hope and fading, falling, slipping away before Dean can find him? Dragged out and ripped open and eaten slowly by the same sack of shit that turned Dean into a fucking roadmap of scars and memories that he never, ever lets come to the surface?
It’s got Dean’s thoughts frying, freezing, stuck on a pulsing, panicked loop of findsammyfindsammyfindsammy that does a fuck ton of no good in interrogating bikers, in badgering every dive bar drunk he can find for any clue as to who took Sam and where.
It isn’t until he runs out of burnouts and boozehounds to shake down that the swift, steady undercurrent of panic driving him, pushing him, rises, swallows Dean whole, leaves his breathing fast and faint and dizzy with a hot, irrational rush of he'sgotSamhe'sgotSamhe'sgotSam, that first, tearing, searing bite burning in his memory, the tear of fangs and the rip of his wrist, the awful, stomach churning tug of tendons, as that sick, fanged fuck groaned with the first hit, pulled for more while Dean thrashed, fought against the bars, against cold, steel-strong fingers that just would not give, but it's not Dean anymore, it's Sam and he's screaming, screaming out for Dean to find him, save him, but he can't, and that’s when his eyes shoot skyward, look up in sharp desperation, searching for direction or answers or a goddamn miracle, Sam and the ground and gravity torn out from under him. That's when he sees the cameras at the corner of the parking lot.
That's when everything Dad ever drilled into them as hunters floods back, jerks Dean out of his panic, reminds him that he knows what the fuck to do here, that every second he spends scrambling around the parking lot like a hysterical soccer mom is another Sammy has to spend squaring off against this thing all alone, and that’s what does it.
It's the kick in the ass he needs, what has him shoving the hot, sick rush of fear down, burying the panic and the memories in every inch of hunter training Dad ever gave them. It's what turns his fear in to ferocity, what turns panic into plans, plans to find whatever the hell's got his baby brother and tear it to fucking pieces. And if it is a vampire? If it's laid so much as a molar on Sam?
Well, Dean was in that basement for a hell of a long time. Had nothing to do but hate the bloodsucking bastard that caged him there. Hate him and think, dream of ways to hurt his undead ass. And he knows how to kill 'em now. Knows just which of his plans will take the thing down.
Knows just what's gonna hurt that sick son of a bitch the most.
The fury, the cold, icy determination to fucking punish whatever the hell has Sammy is what spurs him on, is what keeps him focused, steady, moving as he digs out the right badges, the right cover, as he cooks up the story that gets him in with the lady cop, that has the leads just fucking falling into his lap, that has hope, a tiny, fragile spark lighting in him that he's gonna find Sam, gonna get to him, gonna save him, before his baby brother has any new scars to live with.
Before something happens that Dean can't even think of, can't even allow himself to accept as a possibility.
Of course, that's right up until this lady turns out to be one of the more thorough goddamn cops Dean’s worked with in his long life of above the law, the fat black dude he nabbed the badge from coming back to bite his ass like a doughnut, with Deputy Pert-Ass this close to arresting him before Dean unloads, lets rules and training and the job as he knows it go, pours out what seems like his fucking life story to this lady cop in the driver’s seat as he tries, tries to make her understand like she can’t possibly understand what Sam means to him, why she’s got to forget the fucking rules and take him to his goddamn brother which turns out to be what does it, what gets her to throw the rulebook out the window ‘cause, wouldn't you know it, she's lost a brother to this thing, too.
Doesn’t stop her from cuffing his ass to the goddamn squad car the second they reach a pitted gravel rut that’s more ditch than road and just screams “get in the van”, but when it comes to handcuffs, Dean could give even Sammy a run for his money in the Houdini department, which mean’s everything’s coming up roses.
Until he sees the cage.
And god, his vision just whites out, falls away as the anger, the rage, the fury just swallows him because whatever the hell this is didn't just take Sammy, it fucking caged him, caged him just like it caged Dean, and when he finds it, when he gets his fucking hands on it, he's gonna tear it apart, rip into it and just keep going until there's not enough of the thing left to regret ever taking his little brother from him, ever laying a motherfucking finger on Sammy.
The only thing, the only thing that keeps Dean from snatching the gun from his waistband and starting after this thing right the hell now is the face that he's got his hands shoved through the bars to just fucking touch, running fingers over filthy, bruised, bloody skin that's the best thing in the goddamn world because it's Sammy and he's warm and alive and here, grinning at Dean like he's the best thing he's ever fucking seen, leaning into his hands and kneeling up at the bars and twisting his fingers in Dean's collar with a relived, breathy little laugh.
"Gonna count my fingers and toes, Dean?" Sam teases, not letting go, not pulling back an inch, and there's rebar in his face, a nasty, rough iron grid keeping them apart, but Dean can still feel his brother's breath ghosting across his face, can still feel the words wash over him, through him, can still feel the heat of Sam in front of him, around him, still here, still alive, and everything's not okay, but it's getting there. They're gonna get it there.
"Don't fucking tempt me," Dean snorts in a relieved, hysterical half-laugh as he can't help, just can't fucking help awkwardly ghosting hands over Sammy's wrists through the bars, over his elbows, over his neck, just checking, just fucking making sure that the skin there - the filthy, tanned, wonderful skin - isn't broken or bleeding or bloody, that nothing, nothing, nothing on this earth did to Sammy what it did to him, and it shows, it must show, on his face, because Sam pales, pulls back in protest.
"Dean, it's people," he shakes his head. "They're just people."
As if that means anything. Excuses anything.
They put Sam, his Sammy, in a mother. fucking. cage.
So they're people. It doesn't change what they've done. It doesn't change what they were gonna do to Sam.
It doesn't change what Dean's gonna do to them.
As far as Dean's concerned, whatever did this to Sam?
It's just another kind of monster.
"Come on, Dean," Sam pushes, tangling their fingers together over his pulse and leaning close, close enough for Dean to feel the heat of him, the puff of his breath the quick, tickling tangle of his hair. "Just let local PD handle it. Spring me, we'll blow town, be halfway through True Grit by dinner."
Sammy's workin' him.
Dean knows his little brother's workin' him, tryin' to talk him around, using warm skin and a steady pulse to try and convince him to let this go, to swallow the rage and push down the fury and not go after the scum that did this with the same sharp, lethal hatred he's got for their usual type of monster.
And goddamnit, it might fuckin' work.
He's still pissed as fuck. Still ready and rarin' to tear into whoever had the nerve, whoever was fucking stupid enough, to lay a hand on his fucking brother, but - and he can't fucking believe this - but goddamnit, with every second that passes, every beat, every strong, steady beat he can feel beneath his fingers, tangled tight with Sam's, warms and close and here, just grabbing Sam, just fucking taking his brother and putting this shithole of a town in their rearview and finding some dive deep enough to drown the sight of his brother, his Sammy, in a motherfucking cage, to the deepest depths of denial and repression.
"First rule of Book Club, Sam," Dean sighs, tightening his fingers and letting his head fall forward against the bars as he tamps it all down, lets Sam, warm and all around him, for all the welded iron keeping them apart, wash away the rage threatening to swallow him whole.
"I know, I know," Sam laughs and goddamnit, Dean can feel it, feel the laughter shaking his body, the quick puff against his face. "First rule of Book Club is 'We don't talk about Book Club.'"
"Cousins, huh?" the lady cop remarks skeptically from the cage next to Sammy's as Dean sets to the lock, and Dean gives zero fucks about whatever's in this lady's head, because what he's looking at here is a few fucking steps up from what he was on the other side of in Covington, and it's gonna take a hell of a lot more than garden tools to bust Sammy out.
"Alright, talk to me on this lock, Sammy," he prompts, kneeling back.
"It's electric," Sam pipes up, always the fucking straight-'A' student. "The control box is over there."
"And you can’t spoonbend your way out?" Dean asks, searching the control on the wall for something, anything he can pry open and take a shot at bypassing without locking down the whole damn rig in the process.
"I told you, it doesn’t work like that, Dean." And Dean can hear the eyeroll in Sam's voice, doesn't need to turn from his work on the lock to know exactly what look's on his brother's face. "That was some- some freak adrenaline rush thing."
"And what?" Dean snorts, giving up on the goddamn lock and going back to his brother. "Being fucking snatch-and-grabbed and stuffed into a goddamn cage wasn’t scary enough for you?"
"Apparently not."
“Dude,” Dean scoffs. “Worst. Powers. Ever. They keep the key on 'em?”
"It's on a chain, like a necklace or something," Sam answers, then catches Dean's eye, holds it hard. "Dean, whatever you're thinkin' on this-"
"Sammy," Dean cuts him off, but Sam doesn't let him get any further.
"Just, don't sink to their level Dean," Sam presses, "Please. That's all I'm askin'."
Dean can't say anything. Can't promise anything. Can't do anything but swallow, swallow tight and hard and try to shove down on the hot, heavy tug of rage in him.
He can't promise Sammy.
He wants to. He fucking wants to.
But he knows himself. He knows that he's not gonna be able to let this go, not gonna let that image, that nightmare of Sammy, scared and alone and trapped in a motherfucking cage of all goddamn places, lined up and ready to become just another in a long ass line of disappearances, and that means that it's not just Sammy, but the guy they were looking for in the first place. Not just Sammy, but the lady cop's brother and every owner of every junker in that back lot, line after line of car, line after line of scared eyes and dirty skin, brothers, sisters, mothers, and fathers, all taken. All snatched and caged and forced to endure days and nights trapped behind those goddamn bars, seeing the end coming and not being able to do a goddamn thing to stop it, alone and scared, and Dean can't just let that go, he can't.
But he has to.
He fucking has to, all 'cause the lady cop found her justice boner just as soon as she nailed Pa Clampett in the fucking face (and don't think Dean doesn't know what went down there. Woman's got no poker face, and if he can spot a point blank shot at a high angle, so can I.A.) which, yeah, real convenient. Put a fucking freeze on the firearm therapy right when Dean's about to show Bud and Cletus why you don't fuck with Dean's little brother, why you don't take him and you don't cage him and you don't tie Dean down, get him helpless, then make him fucking listen while you march down to the basement with a 40/40, ready to put his goddamn brother down like some sort of animal.
You don't do that.
You don't do it and live, not to him, not to Sammy. Not if you wanna keep walkin' and talkin', but this chick has the Feds coming and a gleam, a knowing in her eye that says she's sure he's no cousin of Sam's, that is but isn't saying his name, thinking about turning him in if he so much as breathes wrong, settled score with the Beverly Hellbillies or no.
It leaves him stuck, fucked up and fucked over, with a burn on his shoulder and hot, hate-filled rage churning, twisting in his stomach, burning, turning, but with nowhere to go.
And Sammy can feel it, stays quiet on the walk back. Just keeps at his side as they trudge through the ass end of nowhere towards the closest thing to civilization this stain on the map can offer, but as soon as they're back, Dean's shoving his crap in a duffle, snatching up everything they've got and shoving it in the trunk, putting pedal to metal and just biting it down, keeping it penned as long as he can as his baby does him proud, tears them out and away and as far from this fucking nightmare as she can at a speed that has the chassis rocking, has Sam subtly clenching his fist on the door handle as the lonely country road they're ripping up throws them curves and turns, but it's nothing.
Nothing to him and nothing to his baby. Nothing she can't handle. Nothing that slows them down, and even with that - with the speed and the asphalt and Sam, safe and silent in the front seat - even then, they're not three hours outside of town before he's jerking his girl over to the shoulder, shuddering to a stop and slamming the door behind him, ripping open the trunk and snatching out the crowbar and just letting loose, wailing on some pissant fucking tree as hard as he can because there's nothing else he fucking can do.
Can't take it out on the motherfucking hicks that did this. Can't take it out on the undead son of bitch that started this shit. Can't take it out on Sammy, cause it's not his fault.
Not Sam’s fucking fault that his brother's so fucked up, that he can't swallow it down and file this crap away with all the rest ‘cause he's just so fucking angry and so fucking- fucking traumatized, and Dean doesn't do this shit, doesn't get like this, and here he is, beating the shit out of a fucking poplar because he's not man enough to deal with the fact he got grabbed once upon a time, and that just makes him angrier, makes him hit harder, because fuck if he's become this, fuck if he'll let himself be this person, this sad, weak, damaged excuse for a fucking person.
Better to be angry.
Better to be made of fucking rage than scared, helpless, tied as Sam gets shot, put down like a sick fucking dog as Dean can't do anything, nothing. Sidelined by hicks and screwed out of bloody, brutal vengeance by a lady badge with a fucked up idea of fair play and feeling, always fucking feeling those bars, that fucking cage and those fucking fangs digging into him, tearing, ripping, chewing him away into nothing and dragging Sam away, kicking and screaming until iron clanks and a lock clicks and a shot rings out, and Dean can't feel his hands anymore, just the ache of the burn his shoulder and the hard, angry thunk of iron against wood, the sharp, acrid sting of wood chips against his skin, flecks and shards of bark and the bitter, sticky scent of sap stinging his eyes, and maybe that's what's making them water, making them run down his face, needle sharp and white hot.
And he doesn't know how long it lasts, how long it is until the crowbar drops from his nerveless fingers, but Sam is there, passes him a beer from the cooler and picks up the crowbar and doesn't say anything as they lean against the sleek, sun-warmed side of his baby, as Dean silently takes back the keys and drives them to the first dive he can find and goes straight for the whiskey, drinking until the world is distant and unsteady, fading into Sam at his elbow and the familiar combination of slightly lumpy pillows and sheets worn thin from too many washes, hazy and homey and here, so here as he falls, slips across the line between asleep and awake.
But that's when the haze clears.
When the distant, dreamy film of liquor is ripped away, it's cages again, nothing but bars - bars trapping him, bars trapping Sam - and he's so close and so far away and it's all at the same time and he can hear his baby brother, hear his hoarse, anguished screams, but he can't fucking reach him and he can't fucking touch him and he's not fucking okay and it sounds like they're ripping into him, tearing into him, slicing away with knives and teeth and claws and Dean has to stop them, has to fucking get to Sammy but he can't, he just fucking can't, and it burns, physically burns, burns like mom, burns like Jess, burns like the brand on his shoulder as the iron heats, welds, turns red hot as it tightens, closes in, grows tighter with every one of Sam's screams and the bars are closing in, burning, him eating away at skin and muscle and bone like they have fucking teeth, and Dean can feel the bites, feel the chewing, feel himself being eaten away as the bars, the walls, the bites close in, and Sam just keeps screaming and Sam, what are they doing to SAM?
And then there are hands, hands and he's jerking awake and he might be in the hotel room, but there's no goddamn air and no goddamn room and he doesn't know what to fucking do-
But Sam is there, warm and solid and shoving Dean's head between his knees.
"Dean! Dean, it’s okay. You're okay, just breathe," Sam coaches, coaches because he knows firsthand what to do when you're having a panic attack.
Because Dean is having a fucking panic attack.
He has fucking panic attacks now.
"Don't say anything," Dean pants with a glare. "Don't you fucking say anything."
"I know. I won't," Sam shakes his head, making slow, steady passes down Dean's back, steady, because goddamnit, if his fucking lungs will fucking work already. "Come on, just- Come on. Deep breaths."
"Jesus fucking Christ," Dean swears, shoving his hands through his hair.
"Good. That's good," Sam encourages.
"Motherfucker."
Swearing is good. Swearing helps, the familiar words flowing out like a fucking prayer.
"Here," Sam presses a flask in his hand, and if swearing helps, bourbon is a goddamn silver bullet, because fuck.
"Enablin' me, Sammy," Dean rasps after a few long, steadying drags.
"It's the Winchester Way, right?" Sam shrugs.
Dean gives a weak laugh.
"Guess it is."
They're quiet for a long moment, Dean nursing the flask, Sam a warm, steady line of heat against his side in the dark, silent except for the hum of the air conditioner and the slow, steady in and out of their breathing.
"It's almost early," Sam murmurs, leaning into him a little. "You wanna hit the road? Grab breakfast?"
"Are you actually suggesting we eat?" Dean gasps mockingly.
"Shut up, dude," Sam scoffs, and even in the dim of the motel room, Dean can see the flush crawling up his neck.
"Christo," Dean teases with a grin. "No, no, wait, I've got a silver knife somewhere-"
"You're an asshole," Sam laughs, smacking him with a pillow.
"You love it," Dean shoves him in retaliation as he stands. "Pack up, bitch. I want an omelet. Or Pie. Dude: Pie omelet. I'm a genius."
"No, you're a jerk," Sam snipes back, doing a poor job of hiding his grin as he shoves clothes into his duffle. “And they already have that, it's called quiche, and when I ordered it for breakfast last week, you called me a Frenchie gaybo.”
Dean snorts, tugging on his jeans.
“As if those cheese-eating surrender monkeys could invent something as awesome as the Pomelette.”
“Quiche, Dean.”
It’s not dealing with the problem. Not taking on the fact that they’re both so fucked up that it sneaks up on them sometimes, swallows them, gets so bad they need a hand up to get out from under it, but it’s close enough.
It’s getting back onto the road. It’s the next book in the tape deck and the next diner along the way and all the smooth, sun-warmed miles between, Sam in the passenger seat next to him, his hair still tousled with sleep and flying every which way in the breeze from the open window as Portis filters through the speakers, all guns, smoke, and lone heroes.
It’s not normal. It’s probably not healthy. But it’s theirs.
It’s theirs, and it’s all Dean needs.
Next Fic: Father's Gun
Authors: diana_lucifera & tersichore
Pairing: Gen, Wincest in future parts
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: panic attacks, ptsd
Summary: Pissing Dean off is the real most dangerous game.
Notes: This is officially the LAST tagfic! Starting next week, we'll be departing from canon completely and begin posting "Father's Gun," the big damn sequel! Yay!!
Previous Fic | Brother's Blood Masterpost
For all that hunting weighs on Sam - leaves it’s fingerprints in nightmares and daydreams and long, sullen broods staring out the window of the Impala, fingering the rosary twined in the binding of Dad’s journal as his mouth works, his mind tangles, tries to deal with the crap they go through on a daily basis - Dean’s never really had trouble with it.
Loneliness? Sure, at least until Sammy got back in the saddle and made that a thing of the past.
Regret? Of course. Hard not to feel guilty when every mistake you make could mean another innocent person, another mother or sister or daughter, on the slab, dead and gone and leaving a family going through hell, all ‘cause you weren’t good enough, weren’t smart enough, didn’t work fast enough.
But all the crap? The bloody, gory, awful shit they shovel day in and day out? It's never really stuck in Dean’s brain as nightmare material before. Not the same way it did for Sammy, anyway.
At least, not until a few weeks after Sammy’s little psychic awakening in Michigan, right around the time his brother stopped twitching at loud noises, reaching for things gingerly, carefully, like he was scared that they were gonna explode, he grabbed at 'em fast enough, which is ridiculous, ‘cause as far as Sammy’s little hidden talent goes? They’ve seen a whole lot of nothin’ ever since he redecorated the Miller’s living room in Early American shrapnel.
Dean is enjoying the lack of freaky on their doorstep, the way Sammy is slowly relaxing as any and all evidence that he can see the future or destroy shit with his mind fades to memory and history and the cramped, crabbed notes in the back of their journal that Sam only makes when he thinks Dean’s distracted, too wrapped up in hitting on girls in bars or researching their next job or showing his baby some love under the hood to notice Sam hunched over their slowly growing compendium of freaky.
Quietly adding himself to their personal account of things that go bump in the night.
Dean would rip the pages out, would tear them up and burn them and then fucking salt the ashes, but the last time he caught Sam, found him making notes on himself like he was one of the monsters they hunt, the first and last time he's actually moved to stop him, Sammy’d snatched the book away, called veto power of all goddamn things and used his goddamn gorilla arms to hold the thing out of reach until he’d talked Dean around, got him to agree that the notes could stay, that knowing all they could about the psychic kids and the thing that killed Mom and Jess was important, that solving this case was more important than Dean never having to see Sam’s name and Max’s on the same page, like they were the same… anything.
Like they had anything in common at all.
And they don’t have any leads on Dad or the thing that got Mom and Jess, the thing that’s somehow weirdly wrapped up in Sammy’s spoonbending, just the road and hunting and each other, and on the one hand, it’s frustrating, looking and looking and coming up with nothing.
But on the other, it’s the Impala. It’s horizons and Hemingway.
It's the same five albums and Sammy in the passenger seat and leads that may or may not be jobs, just diners and highway and salt and burns and Sammy slowly, slowly unwinding from the mess he was in Michigan, no dreams or powers or premonitions to weigh him down, and that, more than anything, has got them both easier than they’ve been in a long while, trucking across the country, chasing cases that turn out to be small fry hauntings or nothing at all, just a direction to drive, sun-warmed asphalt under their wheels and wind in their faces, sneaking in the cab of the Impala and toying with Sam’s hair as Dean thumbs Metallica into the tape deck, shoving their box of audiobooks at Sam and telling him to pick something that doesn’t suck by the end of Master of Puppets.
And it’s not until some mook named Albert Jenkins disappears in Minnesota that Dean learns what it is to have all your worst nightmares come to life, to play out in living color and broad daylight, to fall and fade and follow you into sleep long after you’ve shoved a knife in their ribs and given them a couple of slugs to the face for good measure.
Because Dean is gone for a minute.
One. Fucking. Minute.
Just long enough to take a leak and shake it off, check that he’s still a pretty son of a bitch while he’s washing up, but that’s long enough. Long enough for him to come out of the bar, to see that damn journal in the parking lot and know, know that this is a case and something is snatching people and whatever the fuck that something is, it just snatched Sam.
It got him just like that bloodsucking bastard got Dean in Louisiana, just like him, right down to the fucking parking lot, and the memories, the soul-shaking, blood-freezing thought of Sammy in that cage, pale and dirty, trapped knee to elbow by dirty, bloody rebar- Sammy going through two weeks of torture in a motherfucking basement- Sammy with that fucker's fangs in his neck, at his wrist, being bled out slow and getting weaker and weaker, lost and losing strength and losing hope and fading, falling, slipping away before Dean can find him? Dragged out and ripped open and eaten slowly by the same sack of shit that turned Dean into a fucking roadmap of scars and memories that he never, ever lets come to the surface?
It’s got Dean’s thoughts frying, freezing, stuck on a pulsing, panicked loop of findsammyfindsammyfindsammy that does a fuck ton of no good in interrogating bikers, in badgering every dive bar drunk he can find for any clue as to who took Sam and where.
It isn’t until he runs out of burnouts and boozehounds to shake down that the swift, steady undercurrent of panic driving him, pushing him, rises, swallows Dean whole, leaves his breathing fast and faint and dizzy with a hot, irrational rush of he'sgotSamhe'sgotSamhe'sgotSam, that first, tearing, searing bite burning in his memory, the tear of fangs and the rip of his wrist, the awful, stomach churning tug of tendons, as that sick, fanged fuck groaned with the first hit, pulled for more while Dean thrashed, fought against the bars, against cold, steel-strong fingers that just would not give, but it's not Dean anymore, it's Sam and he's screaming, screaming out for Dean to find him, save him, but he can't, and that’s when his eyes shoot skyward, look up in sharp desperation, searching for direction or answers or a goddamn miracle, Sam and the ground and gravity torn out from under him. That's when he sees the cameras at the corner of the parking lot.
That's when everything Dad ever drilled into them as hunters floods back, jerks Dean out of his panic, reminds him that he knows what the fuck to do here, that every second he spends scrambling around the parking lot like a hysterical soccer mom is another Sammy has to spend squaring off against this thing all alone, and that’s what does it.
It's the kick in the ass he needs, what has him shoving the hot, sick rush of fear down, burying the panic and the memories in every inch of hunter training Dad ever gave them. It's what turns his fear in to ferocity, what turns panic into plans, plans to find whatever the hell's got his baby brother and tear it to fucking pieces. And if it is a vampire? If it's laid so much as a molar on Sam?
Well, Dean was in that basement for a hell of a long time. Had nothing to do but hate the bloodsucking bastard that caged him there. Hate him and think, dream of ways to hurt his undead ass. And he knows how to kill 'em now. Knows just which of his plans will take the thing down.
Knows just what's gonna hurt that sick son of a bitch the most.
The fury, the cold, icy determination to fucking punish whatever the hell has Sammy is what spurs him on, is what keeps him focused, steady, moving as he digs out the right badges, the right cover, as he cooks up the story that gets him in with the lady cop, that has the leads just fucking falling into his lap, that has hope, a tiny, fragile spark lighting in him that he's gonna find Sam, gonna get to him, gonna save him, before his baby brother has any new scars to live with.
Before something happens that Dean can't even think of, can't even allow himself to accept as a possibility.
Of course, that's right up until this lady turns out to be one of the more thorough goddamn cops Dean’s worked with in his long life of above the law, the fat black dude he nabbed the badge from coming back to bite his ass like a doughnut, with Deputy Pert-Ass this close to arresting him before Dean unloads, lets rules and training and the job as he knows it go, pours out what seems like his fucking life story to this lady cop in the driver’s seat as he tries, tries to make her understand like she can’t possibly understand what Sam means to him, why she’s got to forget the fucking rules and take him to his goddamn brother which turns out to be what does it, what gets her to throw the rulebook out the window ‘cause, wouldn't you know it, she's lost a brother to this thing, too.
Doesn’t stop her from cuffing his ass to the goddamn squad car the second they reach a pitted gravel rut that’s more ditch than road and just screams “get in the van”, but when it comes to handcuffs, Dean could give even Sammy a run for his money in the Houdini department, which mean’s everything’s coming up roses.
Until he sees the cage.
And god, his vision just whites out, falls away as the anger, the rage, the fury just swallows him because whatever the hell this is didn't just take Sammy, it fucking caged him, caged him just like it caged Dean, and when he finds it, when he gets his fucking hands on it, he's gonna tear it apart, rip into it and just keep going until there's not enough of the thing left to regret ever taking his little brother from him, ever laying a motherfucking finger on Sammy.
The only thing, the only thing that keeps Dean from snatching the gun from his waistband and starting after this thing right the hell now is the face that he's got his hands shoved through the bars to just fucking touch, running fingers over filthy, bruised, bloody skin that's the best thing in the goddamn world because it's Sammy and he's warm and alive and here, grinning at Dean like he's the best thing he's ever fucking seen, leaning into his hands and kneeling up at the bars and twisting his fingers in Dean's collar with a relived, breathy little laugh.
"Gonna count my fingers and toes, Dean?" Sam teases, not letting go, not pulling back an inch, and there's rebar in his face, a nasty, rough iron grid keeping them apart, but Dean can still feel his brother's breath ghosting across his face, can still feel the words wash over him, through him, can still feel the heat of Sam in front of him, around him, still here, still alive, and everything's not okay, but it's getting there. They're gonna get it there.
"Don't fucking tempt me," Dean snorts in a relieved, hysterical half-laugh as he can't help, just can't fucking help awkwardly ghosting hands over Sammy's wrists through the bars, over his elbows, over his neck, just checking, just fucking making sure that the skin there - the filthy, tanned, wonderful skin - isn't broken or bleeding or bloody, that nothing, nothing, nothing on this earth did to Sammy what it did to him, and it shows, it must show, on his face, because Sam pales, pulls back in protest.
"Dean, it's people," he shakes his head. "They're just people."
As if that means anything. Excuses anything.
They put Sam, his Sammy, in a mother. fucking. cage.
So they're people. It doesn't change what they've done. It doesn't change what they were gonna do to Sam.
It doesn't change what Dean's gonna do to them.
As far as Dean's concerned, whatever did this to Sam?
It's just another kind of monster.
"Come on, Dean," Sam pushes, tangling their fingers together over his pulse and leaning close, close enough for Dean to feel the heat of him, the puff of his breath the quick, tickling tangle of his hair. "Just let local PD handle it. Spring me, we'll blow town, be halfway through True Grit by dinner."
Sammy's workin' him.
Dean knows his little brother's workin' him, tryin' to talk him around, using warm skin and a steady pulse to try and convince him to let this go, to swallow the rage and push down the fury and not go after the scum that did this with the same sharp, lethal hatred he's got for their usual type of monster.
And goddamnit, it might fuckin' work.
He's still pissed as fuck. Still ready and rarin' to tear into whoever had the nerve, whoever was fucking stupid enough, to lay a hand on his fucking brother, but - and he can't fucking believe this - but goddamnit, with every second that passes, every beat, every strong, steady beat he can feel beneath his fingers, tangled tight with Sam's, warms and close and here, just grabbing Sam, just fucking taking his brother and putting this shithole of a town in their rearview and finding some dive deep enough to drown the sight of his brother, his Sammy, in a motherfucking cage, to the deepest depths of denial and repression.
"First rule of Book Club, Sam," Dean sighs, tightening his fingers and letting his head fall forward against the bars as he tamps it all down, lets Sam, warm and all around him, for all the welded iron keeping them apart, wash away the rage threatening to swallow him whole.
"I know, I know," Sam laughs and goddamnit, Dean can feel it, feel the laughter shaking his body, the quick puff against his face. "First rule of Book Club is 'We don't talk about Book Club.'"
"Cousins, huh?" the lady cop remarks skeptically from the cage next to Sammy's as Dean sets to the lock, and Dean gives zero fucks about whatever's in this lady's head, because what he's looking at here is a few fucking steps up from what he was on the other side of in Covington, and it's gonna take a hell of a lot more than garden tools to bust Sammy out.
"Alright, talk to me on this lock, Sammy," he prompts, kneeling back.
"It's electric," Sam pipes up, always the fucking straight-'A' student. "The control box is over there."
"And you can’t spoonbend your way out?" Dean asks, searching the control on the wall for something, anything he can pry open and take a shot at bypassing without locking down the whole damn rig in the process.
"I told you, it doesn’t work like that, Dean." And Dean can hear the eyeroll in Sam's voice, doesn't need to turn from his work on the lock to know exactly what look's on his brother's face. "That was some- some freak adrenaline rush thing."
"And what?" Dean snorts, giving up on the goddamn lock and going back to his brother. "Being fucking snatch-and-grabbed and stuffed into a goddamn cage wasn’t scary enough for you?"
"Apparently not."
“Dude,” Dean scoffs. “Worst. Powers. Ever. They keep the key on 'em?”
"It's on a chain, like a necklace or something," Sam answers, then catches Dean's eye, holds it hard. "Dean, whatever you're thinkin' on this-"
"Sammy," Dean cuts him off, but Sam doesn't let him get any further.
"Just, don't sink to their level Dean," Sam presses, "Please. That's all I'm askin'."
Dean can't say anything. Can't promise anything. Can't do anything but swallow, swallow tight and hard and try to shove down on the hot, heavy tug of rage in him.
He can't promise Sammy.
He wants to. He fucking wants to.
But he knows himself. He knows that he's not gonna be able to let this go, not gonna let that image, that nightmare of Sammy, scared and alone and trapped in a motherfucking cage of all goddamn places, lined up and ready to become just another in a long ass line of disappearances, and that means that it's not just Sammy, but the guy they were looking for in the first place. Not just Sammy, but the lady cop's brother and every owner of every junker in that back lot, line after line of car, line after line of scared eyes and dirty skin, brothers, sisters, mothers, and fathers, all taken. All snatched and caged and forced to endure days and nights trapped behind those goddamn bars, seeing the end coming and not being able to do a goddamn thing to stop it, alone and scared, and Dean can't just let that go, he can't.
But he has to.
He fucking has to, all 'cause the lady cop found her justice boner just as soon as she nailed Pa Clampett in the fucking face (and don't think Dean doesn't know what went down there. Woman's got no poker face, and if he can spot a point blank shot at a high angle, so can I.A.) which, yeah, real convenient. Put a fucking freeze on the firearm therapy right when Dean's about to show Bud and Cletus why you don't fuck with Dean's little brother, why you don't take him and you don't cage him and you don't tie Dean down, get him helpless, then make him fucking listen while you march down to the basement with a 40/40, ready to put his goddamn brother down like some sort of animal.
You don't do that.
You don't do it and live, not to him, not to Sammy. Not if you wanna keep walkin' and talkin', but this chick has the Feds coming and a gleam, a knowing in her eye that says she's sure he's no cousin of Sam's, that is but isn't saying his name, thinking about turning him in if he so much as breathes wrong, settled score with the Beverly Hellbillies or no.
It leaves him stuck, fucked up and fucked over, with a burn on his shoulder and hot, hate-filled rage churning, twisting in his stomach, burning, turning, but with nowhere to go.
And Sammy can feel it, stays quiet on the walk back. Just keeps at his side as they trudge through the ass end of nowhere towards the closest thing to civilization this stain on the map can offer, but as soon as they're back, Dean's shoving his crap in a duffle, snatching up everything they've got and shoving it in the trunk, putting pedal to metal and just biting it down, keeping it penned as long as he can as his baby does him proud, tears them out and away and as far from this fucking nightmare as she can at a speed that has the chassis rocking, has Sam subtly clenching his fist on the door handle as the lonely country road they're ripping up throws them curves and turns, but it's nothing.
Nothing to him and nothing to his baby. Nothing she can't handle. Nothing that slows them down, and even with that - with the speed and the asphalt and Sam, safe and silent in the front seat - even then, they're not three hours outside of town before he's jerking his girl over to the shoulder, shuddering to a stop and slamming the door behind him, ripping open the trunk and snatching out the crowbar and just letting loose, wailing on some pissant fucking tree as hard as he can because there's nothing else he fucking can do.
Can't take it out on the motherfucking hicks that did this. Can't take it out on the undead son of bitch that started this shit. Can't take it out on Sammy, cause it's not his fault.
Not Sam’s fucking fault that his brother's so fucked up, that he can't swallow it down and file this crap away with all the rest ‘cause he's just so fucking angry and so fucking- fucking traumatized, and Dean doesn't do this shit, doesn't get like this, and here he is, beating the shit out of a fucking poplar because he's not man enough to deal with the fact he got grabbed once upon a time, and that just makes him angrier, makes him hit harder, because fuck if he's become this, fuck if he'll let himself be this person, this sad, weak, damaged excuse for a fucking person.
Better to be angry.
Better to be made of fucking rage than scared, helpless, tied as Sam gets shot, put down like a sick fucking dog as Dean can't do anything, nothing. Sidelined by hicks and screwed out of bloody, brutal vengeance by a lady badge with a fucked up idea of fair play and feeling, always fucking feeling those bars, that fucking cage and those fucking fangs digging into him, tearing, ripping, chewing him away into nothing and dragging Sam away, kicking and screaming until iron clanks and a lock clicks and a shot rings out, and Dean can't feel his hands anymore, just the ache of the burn his shoulder and the hard, angry thunk of iron against wood, the sharp, acrid sting of wood chips against his skin, flecks and shards of bark and the bitter, sticky scent of sap stinging his eyes, and maybe that's what's making them water, making them run down his face, needle sharp and white hot.
And he doesn't know how long it lasts, how long it is until the crowbar drops from his nerveless fingers, but Sam is there, passes him a beer from the cooler and picks up the crowbar and doesn't say anything as they lean against the sleek, sun-warmed side of his baby, as Dean silently takes back the keys and drives them to the first dive he can find and goes straight for the whiskey, drinking until the world is distant and unsteady, fading into Sam at his elbow and the familiar combination of slightly lumpy pillows and sheets worn thin from too many washes, hazy and homey and here, so here as he falls, slips across the line between asleep and awake.
But that's when the haze clears.
When the distant, dreamy film of liquor is ripped away, it's cages again, nothing but bars - bars trapping him, bars trapping Sam - and he's so close and so far away and it's all at the same time and he can hear his baby brother, hear his hoarse, anguished screams, but he can't fucking reach him and he can't fucking touch him and he's not fucking okay and it sounds like they're ripping into him, tearing into him, slicing away with knives and teeth and claws and Dean has to stop them, has to fucking get to Sammy but he can't, he just fucking can't, and it burns, physically burns, burns like mom, burns like Jess, burns like the brand on his shoulder as the iron heats, welds, turns red hot as it tightens, closes in, grows tighter with every one of Sam's screams and the bars are closing in, burning, him eating away at skin and muscle and bone like they have fucking teeth, and Dean can feel the bites, feel the chewing, feel himself being eaten away as the bars, the walls, the bites close in, and Sam just keeps screaming and Sam, what are they doing to SAM?
And then there are hands, hands and he's jerking awake and he might be in the hotel room, but there's no goddamn air and no goddamn room and he doesn't know what to fucking do-
But Sam is there, warm and solid and shoving Dean's head between his knees.
"Dean! Dean, it’s okay. You're okay, just breathe," Sam coaches, coaches because he knows firsthand what to do when you're having a panic attack.
Because Dean is having a fucking panic attack.
He has fucking panic attacks now.
"Don't say anything," Dean pants with a glare. "Don't you fucking say anything."
"I know. I won't," Sam shakes his head, making slow, steady passes down Dean's back, steady, because goddamnit, if his fucking lungs will fucking work already. "Come on, just- Come on. Deep breaths."
"Jesus fucking Christ," Dean swears, shoving his hands through his hair.
"Good. That's good," Sam encourages.
"Motherfucker."
Swearing is good. Swearing helps, the familiar words flowing out like a fucking prayer.
"Here," Sam presses a flask in his hand, and if swearing helps, bourbon is a goddamn silver bullet, because fuck.
"Enablin' me, Sammy," Dean rasps after a few long, steadying drags.
"It's the Winchester Way, right?" Sam shrugs.
Dean gives a weak laugh.
"Guess it is."
They're quiet for a long moment, Dean nursing the flask, Sam a warm, steady line of heat against his side in the dark, silent except for the hum of the air conditioner and the slow, steady in and out of their breathing.
"It's almost early," Sam murmurs, leaning into him a little. "You wanna hit the road? Grab breakfast?"
"Are you actually suggesting we eat?" Dean gasps mockingly.
"Shut up, dude," Sam scoffs, and even in the dim of the motel room, Dean can see the flush crawling up his neck.
"Christo," Dean teases with a grin. "No, no, wait, I've got a silver knife somewhere-"
"You're an asshole," Sam laughs, smacking him with a pillow.
"You love it," Dean shoves him in retaliation as he stands. "Pack up, bitch. I want an omelet. Or Pie. Dude: Pie omelet. I'm a genius."
"No, you're a jerk," Sam snipes back, doing a poor job of hiding his grin as he shoves clothes into his duffle. “And they already have that, it's called quiche, and when I ordered it for breakfast last week, you called me a Frenchie gaybo.”
Dean snorts, tugging on his jeans.
“As if those cheese-eating surrender monkeys could invent something as awesome as the Pomelette.”
“Quiche, Dean.”
It’s not dealing with the problem. Not taking on the fact that they’re both so fucked up that it sneaks up on them sometimes, swallows them, gets so bad they need a hand up to get out from under it, but it’s close enough.
It’s getting back onto the road. It’s the next book in the tape deck and the next diner along the way and all the smooth, sun-warmed miles between, Sam in the passenger seat next to him, his hair still tousled with sleep and flying every which way in the breeze from the open window as Portis filters through the speakers, all guns, smoke, and lone heroes.
It’s not normal. It’s probably not healthy. But it’s theirs.
It’s theirs, and it’s all Dean needs.
Next Fic: Father's Gun