FIC POST: "Dear Darkness" part 3B/6 (Supernatural)

[flowrs4ophelia]

Later in the afternoon, Dean is leaving his phone to charge on the kitchen table and then he almost walks right into Castiel as soon as he turns around.

He jerks in surprise and then gives him a lightly annoyed look. "I'm just gonna have to get used to this someday, aren't I?" he says.

Not replying right away, Castiel looks up toward the ceiling somewhat meaningfully, probably able to tell that Sam is upstairs right now. "How is it?" he asks bracingly.

"You mean how's he?" he asks. "Okay. Generally. If you just came by to see how he's getting along, go ask him yourself."

"I do need to see him. If he'll agree to let me attempt it, there's something I might be able to do to help him."

"Right..." Castiel mentioned something of the sort before taking off last time, but it still doesn't make any more sense to him. "Something that could actually work? What happened to 'I can't do anything to make him better'?"

"I can't do anything to repair the damage to his soul, no. Now that he has that wall in place in his mind, the most that can help him now is his own willpower to keep himself stable. A lot of good luck, too, I'm sure. Which is what made me think of this...I don't even know if it will do him any good with this kind of problem, but I can try..."

"What is it?" Dean asks.

"I'm going to bless him."

His brow shoots up. "Say what?"

"I'm going to mark him," Castiel says, as if assuming Dean just doesn't know what the word means and merely supplying another. Still getting a blank stare, he elaborates, "With a sigil. Of blessing."

"Yeah, I know what you meant," he says, then goes silent a second. "Okay. Actually, no. I have no idea what that means."

"Angels are agents of fate," he explains more helpfully. "Sometimes by blessing someone, we can influence fate in minor ways to make it work out a little more in that person's favor."

Dean crosses his arms, only able to stare at him in some disbelief for a second. "Are you kidding me? You've always had this kind of trick up your sleeve and you only care to tell me now? Don't you think there've been a few other times we could have used some blessings here and there if it would have given us even the slightest better chance?"

"The specific circumstances have never made it an option before. Blessings are very uncommon because they can't just be dealt out lightly. In fact, besides the kind that are carried out by cherubs by orders of Heaven, they're generally obsolete and unheard-of in this age. That is why I needed to find and consult an elder angel to confirm that I even knew how to do it right before coming back here...and was laughed at a little for asking him about it and being preoccupied with such a thing during a time of war, no less."

Dean rolls his eyes a little, more out of weariness than annoyance, and asks, "You mean you've never even done this before?"

"I don't even know more than two angels who have ever marked anyone. As I said, it's only applicable with certain conditions in place. The kind of blessing I'm going to give Sam can only be bestowed on one who has endured profound suffering in service to God and his neighbors."

"...Oh." Dean wraps his head around that in silence for a moment. "Well...yeah, I guess that would only apply here. What exactly is it going to do, though?"

"Heal him, at least to an extent. Protect him. When it's important and it's possible, though not necessarily in ways that will be obvious and perceptible. And it just might be able to lessen the likelihood of that wall in his mind failing."

"So can you even tell me a success rate here? Is this going to work any more than letting him pop a placebo and wishing him the best?"

He starts to recognize some impatience in Castiel's subtle but telling expression. "This is not something you can determine the success or failure of based on a single factor, or which is meant to be used as a solution for a single problem," he says. "Dean, the most important thing this can do for him is help give him peace. If he can be relieved of some of the weight of his burdens and made able to move on from his past a little more easily, we can only hope it will make him less inclined to scratch at that barrier that's holding him together and burying most of his baggage."

Dean thinks about it another moment, then sighs. "Okay, then," he says. "Don't know what you're waiting for."

They find Sam up in the small cramped sitting room that Bobby uses mostly for storage of files and other miscellany. He's sitting in an armchair with his laptop on the end table by it, scrolling through what looks like some news articles, until he sees them come in and shuts it.

"Cas! Hey," he greets him with surprise as they come forward, Dean taking the only other seat in the room.

"Sam," Castiel says, looking closely at him. "I'm relieved to see you well and returned to normal." Seemingly struggling to express as much without sounding too accusatory or offending, he says awkwardly, "Without a soul you were quite...practical, ruthless, impossible to intimidate, and cunningly methodical."

Sam can't help but slowly smile just a bit. "I must have gotten along great with you, then," he says, lightly mocking.

"One would think...Then you threatened to hunt me down and kill me and I decided the style really didn't work as well for you."

Discreetly catching Sam's eye for a moment, Dean mouths the words "Yeah, he missed you" and winks. Sam shakes his head, now with a full and warm grin of amusement.

"Been a while since you last dropped in and said you'd be back," Sam says. "How are things going upstairs?"

Castiel bears the look of someone who doesn't want to spoil his brief vacation by thinking about work. "Never mind," he says simply.

"He's here to do something for you, Sam," Dean says.

Sam looks over at him again, then back up at Castiel with obvious uncertainty. "Am I gonna have to chew on your belt again?" he asks a little uneasily.

Castiel raises a curious eyebrow. "You remember that, do you?"

"Yeah," Sam says, and Dean doesn't like the way he shuffles one foot across the carpet sort of anxiously as he says it with his eyes lowering briefly. "Some things-something like that, especially-are stuck pretty firmly in the hard drive."

"Well, this won't be painful. Not like that, I mean-more like when I put those carvings in your ribs to hide you. A part of it involves marking your skull that way."

Sam's eyes widen for a second in confusion. "And what's this going to do?"

As Castiel explains what he intends to do and what it will mean for him, Dean gets up to stand closer to them near Castiel's side. The more Sam hears, the more he gradually starts to look a little doubtful.

"And...you really think that'll work?" he asks. "For me?"

Castiel tilts his head just slightly. "You have just spent well over a lifetime in the cage after willingly damning yourself to Hell in order to take Lucifer down with you and save the world from destruction."

"Yeah, but...'profound suffering'?" He echoes the words unsurely, almost like he thinks Cas must be kidding. "I don't even remember anything I went through since trapping Lucifer. And I was the one who let him get out in the first place, so I figure it was kind of just serving my time anyway. And how can we even be sure anymore what was and wasn't God's will all along?"

"Serving your time?" Dean says back to him, starting to get a little pissed. "For over a year down there? Man, do you want to remember it?"

"No, of course I don't!" Sam says.

"Then quit talking like you belonged down there or something. See, this is why-" He cuts off in frustration, just shaking his head for a second. "I don't want to hear that crap, it's not going to help you any now that you're in this-this condition."

"Okay, sorry. I'm just saying if I've done such important work for God that I deserve some kind of blessing, why did he bring back Castiel when it was all over and not even me? It's a reasonable enough question."

"Why does it matter? Yeah, you fucked up, and then you did real good, and now it's over, okay? Whatever happened to you in the cage, it's over. And you got to start thinking that way."

Sam sighs. "Yeah. I know."

"Sam, it may be that I was only brought back because my work wasn't done," Castiel says. "Yours evidently was. And consider that the worst Adam is guilty of is getting bullied into saying yes to Michael, but it seems he's still left to rot down there forever. I'm sure you're familiar with the phrase 'The Lord helps those who help themselves.'"

He shrugs. "Yeah..."

"So just humor me for a minute and shut up and let me bless you. I have far more important matters to get back to as soon as I take care of this."

Sam lets out another sigh. "Alright," he says. "What do I have to do?"

"Just sit there, for the most part. It's a fairly simple and brief process. But there's something I must do first as part of it that I need your permission for. It could probably feel quite strange, and as a human you might find the idea of it disagreeable. Before I can bless you, you'll have to bare your soul to me."

His eyes go a little wide again at the sound of that. "What the hell does that mean?"

"It means I will know everything about you. I don't need to touch your soul again, just be allowed a certain kind of access. I have to peer far inside you and examine every facet of it, all your experiences and actions, everything you've ever felt and thought, like opening up a book of your entire existence." As Sam starts showing some obvious trepidation at hearing this, he adds as if to lighten the demand, "It will be more unpleasant for me than for you."

"Gee, thanks," Sam says with an empty laugh, taking some insult.

"Only because of the intensity of the human emotions and sensations in the information I'll have to be taking in all at once," he elaborates as if to amend the way it sounded, while looking vaguely irritated by the comment at the same time. "I won't be able to completely understand and feel any of it because I'm not human, but for that very reason it will probably be somewhat overwhelming to process. You'll hardly feel anything, though, except perhaps a strong and somewhat uncomfortable sense of being very exposed."

Sam's eyes have raised to meet Dean's with uncertainty. Dean just nods his head at him slowly in some silent concession, and Sam looks back over at Cas biting his lip nervously. "I don't know..."

"Sam," Dean says quietly, while Castiel just looks slightly bemused by Sam's hesitation which clearly has some hidden but quite specific and deeply uncomfortable reasons. "Come on, it's okay."

After tapping his foot in tense silence for another moment, Sam finally gives a tiny nod. "Fuck," he mutters. "Well. Here goes nothing...You have to tell me something really embarrassing about you afterwards to make this fair, though, okay?" he says to Castiel, still sounding pretty uneasy but trying to lighten up a little.

"Right...You'll have to let me think on that," he replies dryly as he comes closer.

Dean suddenly feels strangely uncomfortable and invasive staying too close while this happens; he steps back a little to the middle of the room and watches standing there, arms crossed and his whole stance rigid and tight.

Castiel brings the tips of two joined fingers up to Sam's temple with his right hand, then touches the same place on the other side of his face the same way with the other hand. In a strong and steady voice, he starts saying a string of elaborate-sounding phrases in Enochian. At first it doesn't appear that anything is happening, but then after a while it seems that some strange and intense sensation starts coming over Sam. He closes his eyes, the features of his face tightening tensely, and his head starts dropping slightly like he's starting to feel weak.

"Try to stay still," Castiel mutters to him quickly before slipping back into the incantation, and with forced effort Sam sits up straight and still.

Then Castiel's words stop. That's when Dean sees that some kind of faint glow is starting to emanate from him. At the angle where Dean is standing, he can barely see enough of the side of his face to tell, but there is a white light shining through his barely-open eyes and seeping through the line of his closed mouth, showing everywhere else as a much weaker reddish glow through his skin. It's the way he's seen angels give off light when they're close to being exorcised from their vessels, except not as intense.

Meanwhile Sam has started breathing unevenly, his eyes still closed, and there's something about him now that looks so unusual, so indecently vulnerable and open. He has drawn his arms in, almost practically hugging them around himself, and seems to be struggling even more now to stay still and not shrink inwards self-protectively.

Knowing all that's happening, Dean suddenly can't watch so closely. He nervously raises a fist up to rest over his mouth, turning slightly away. This really better fucking work...

After the momentous silence has been drawn out for about half a minute, the gentle light filling the room abruptly dies away and Castiel lets go of Sam's head. Sam gives a heavy release of breath, immediately relaxing as he feels the connection cut off. He nearly falls back against the chair as if Castiel's light touch was actually supporting him, and Castiel rests his hands on his shoulders to steady him through the aftershock.

Now Dean is practically transfixed by it, watching with the fullest attention. Still holding onto him firmly, Castiel utters a last brief incantation, and then brings his head down to place a light kiss on Sam's forehead. It is a quick and weak movement but impossible to miss, the way Sam closes his eyes and flinches away from him at first so that Castiel has to hold him in place tighter again, uncomfortably resisting the expression of such complete absolution in a knee-jerk reaction that he didn't even seem to intend. Immediately following it, Castiel brings his right hand back up and places his palm over the same place in the middle of Sam's forehead. He touches him like this only for a split-second and then Sam's face promptly twists into a look of pain and he groans softly at the quick sensation. He sinks into a slouch, dropping his head into his hand to rub at it there where Cas evidently just carved the sigil into the bone.

Dean takes it that means the thing worked.

They all just look at each other not too directly for a while, nobody seeming to know what to say. In more than one way, things suddenly feel much too intimate in the small room where so much just took place.

Castiel surprises Dean a little when he is the one to finally say something again. "Back when Anna was my superior, I looked up to her a great deal," he starts, getting an alarmed and slightly confused look from both the others. "I was as close to her as I've ever been to any other angels and felt I learned a lot from her. It was very troubling for me when she fell. I not only lost her influence and guidance but was left to doubt all of it, as she had failed in a way that defied everything I believed in.

"I had a relationship like that with Balthazar once as well. He wasn't above me in rank, but I looked up to him in much the same way I did her and counted on him as someone who always seemed to know what to do. It was just as upsetting losing him when I was led to believe he'd perished in battle. And then I found you instead." He looks over at Dean for a second. "Someone else with the right idea who I could believe in and follow. If I didn't handle it well when you started to waver from your purpose and were so close to giving up once, it was mostly because I felt so lost on my own and needed to depend on you to tell me what the hell we were doing. Even when I rebelled, it seems I still had difficulty a lot of the time taking any kind of charge and truly thinking for myself. I don't think I am very strong in that way, as a leader is meant to be, and I think that's why I'm doing such a miserable job so far of fighting this war and getting anyone on the opposition to listen and join me...I believe that counts as the sort of thing I would feel embarrassed about if I had the human kind of capacity to."

Dean watches Sam raising his eyebrows, both of them obviously very taken aback, and then both their faces slowly crack into small grins.

"Okay," Sam says awkwardly with a slow nod. "That...that works."

When they hear some footsteps on the stairs down the hall and Bobby calling for them, Sam grabs his shoes from where he kicked them off on the floor earlier and stays in the chair putting them on. Dean leaves the room and is followed by Cas a moment later.

"Hey," he calls over to Bobby when he sees him reach the top of the stairs carrying a load of laundry.

Bobby freezes for a second when he notices Castiel behind him and then they nod to each other in greeting. As Bobby turns to go throw the basket down in his bedroom, Dean faces Castiel, scratching at the back of his head anxiously. This is possibly the weirdest and most completely unpredictable social moment of his life, and he can't begin to think of what to say.

Finally he gets himself to look directly at his face and just says quietly, "Cas. Thanks."

Castiel seems to be considering something in deep thought, his expression completely indifferent and impossible to read. Then he only nods in response.

"Look, do you...?" Dean throws his arms up at his sides for a second, not at all used to being the one to try to initiate this kind of thing. "You need to talk about anything? You should just know...you don't need to be asked in order to drop something on us like you just admitted to back th-"

"No. Uh...No." Castiel shifts his feet around, his eyes avoiding Dean's. "I think I'm good now."

Dean puts his hands in his pockets, nodding. "Good. Yeah." Something occurs to him for the first time then and he looks back up at him, speaking more seriously. "I guess...you must have seen everything that's behind the wall just now, huh?"

Castiel stares off into the air with a dark look while Dean just waits. For just a moment he can hope for Castiel to be able to tell him something surprising, that what Sam's been through isn't much too horrific for Castiel to even articulate and not every bit as bad as they have all the reason to fear.

But when Cas meets his eyes he only shakes his head with a heavy look of regret, and it's the only response needed.

Sam comes out then with his shoes back on and his laptop put away in its bag over his shoulder. His eyes look very bright and severe somehow, like he's just been through some great emotional upheaval all in the course of a minute or two. After Dean glances over at him for just an instant, he finds Castiel gone. Mouth twitching up in a wry smile for a second like he isn't even surprised, Sam just walks past Dean to go downstairs.

When Dean follows, Bobby is coming back out from his room and meets him at the top of the stairs. A quick glance around obviously tells Bobby that Castiel already left. "What'd I miss?"

That night Dean and Sam drive out to an open field and throw bottles high up in the air to shoot at them for moving target practice. Sam's aim isn't bad at all considering how out of practice half of him is; through the first few tries, he actually does better than Dean.

As they walk around gathering up the bottles from the ground that they missed so far, Sam asks him, "Dean...how have you been doing anyway?"

Dean looks at him in a somewhat caught off guard way. He seems to actually have to think about it a moment and then says, "It's not often I get to say this and actually mean it, but...I'm good, I guess. Things are definitely better than they've been for a while, right? For now..."

Sam spots one of the bottles and leans over to grab it from the ground, biting his lip. "I know you'll probably tell me it's stupid to feel responsible for this, but I really am sorry that everything got messed up for you with Lisa and Ben."

The direct mention of them seizes Dean into a couple seconds of silence before he nods solemnly. "I know."

"It's just...all those things you said to Veritas about how you know you can't really be that person. You know that's bullshit, don't you?"

"Well, it was Veritas, Sam, does that answer your question?" he says dryly. "I don't know, we had just pretty much ended it, I was in a bad place...But it's easier now. No matter how much you want to think you ruined everything, I had a choice all along and I know now I don't regret choosing this. There was a point I could have turned back and gone home if I really believed it was over and there'd be no more danger of getting dragged back into my old life. But I just can't have it both ways, you know. I can't ask them to wait for a day when I can be there all the time when I don't even know when or if that'll happen, so...It kills me that I let them down so much, but letting them keep getting disappointed would just be worse."

Sam nods. "I know. I just hope you realize it's not that you couldn't, if things were different. We always have a streak of bad luck with being able to stay out of trouble, it's nothing wrong with you."

Dean gives him a weary half-smile as they make it back by the car and set down the couple bottles they just retrieved. "Come on, though. You know that's too easy."

"Okay, yeah, maybe a little," Sam admits, looking like he's having trouble explaining what he really means. Then he starts avoiding Dean's eyes, some troubled tension taking over what he can still see of his face. "I just hope it isn't all because..." His voice drifts off into an especially empty-feeling silence before he just shakes his head in a very small motion.

"What?" Dean asks softly.

He suddenly finds the need to check how many rounds are left in his gun, busying his hands stripping it with his head pointed down. "Never mind."

When they're headed back to Bobby's later, Dean keeps seeing Sam idly touch the center of his forehead whenever he catches a glance at him in the passenger seat. It makes it look kind of like he has a headache, but Dean knows he's just thinking about the sigil that's there carved in his skull.

"Do you feel different?" Dean asks him, his tone light and somewhat doubtful.

Sure enough, Sam shakes his head. "No, not exactly. Just recovering from a serious mindfuck."

"How bad was it?"

Sam seems to have to reflect on it a moment. "It didn't feel bad, I guess," he answers. "Not really. Just intense and all kinds of weird."

"Huh. You looked really uncomfortable during most of it."

"Did I really?" He sounds genuinely surprised to hear it. "It did feel really invasive like he said it would. Like all these barriers I didn't even know I always have up were disabled for a while. But it was just a way I'm not used to feeling at all, not exactly in a bad way...I don't even know how to describe it."

They sit in silence for a while after that, the music texturing the air at a low volume. Dean notices Sam restlessly shifting around in his seat a few times and something about his demeanor speaks of something unresolved and agitated in him. He isn't surprised when he eventually breaks the silence again with "Dean, I need to tell you something."

He looks to the side for a second to see Sam's nervous eyes, then focuses back on the road with a bad feeling sinking into his stomach. He doesn't reply, but he's listening.

"I haven't been totally honest about how much I remember," Sam says slowly. "I know I've made it sound like I can only see bits and pieces of what happened to me when I didn't have my soul. But it's more like...how you're never always thinking about every single thing that's happened in the past year, you know, but you still have a general recollection of it all that you draw from. So it kind of felt at first like I didn't have a clear picture of everything, but more details keep coming back whenever something that should remind me of them causes me to make a connection, or when I just try to think back on specific things in depth..."

Dean gives a slow nod. "Right," he says, almost in a whisper.

"So...nothing is actually buried, you understand," Sam continues, now very quietly and sounding more and more hesitant. "It may be kind of a confusing mess, but it's more like I pretty much...remember everything."

He draws in a very slow, tight breath as this slowly sinks in. It's not like he didn't already suspect it was this bad. The way Sam looked at him for a moment in the panic room right after he was returned to his body...He knew this already, deep down. But it doesn't make it any easier to hear Sam more or less admitting it now, sounding like he can't stand to just ignore it any longer.

There is absolutely no way to respond to this and he's not sure Sam is even waiting for him to say anything. It's not like there's any way for him to explain himself here, if that were actually what Sam expected. He just lets out a miserable, heavy, silent sigh that sinks his shoulders down and shakes his head again as he keeps staring ahead at the road in the dark.

Sam is no longer looking up at him. Out of the corner of his eye Dean can see him restlessly fidgeting one hand over his knee, and then he says gently, "We can talk about this, you know. I'm not going to freak out." He waits another couple seconds of silence and adds, "I mean...I already would have."

Giving another frustrated sigh, Dean finally looks over at him briefly. "What is there to talk about?" he asks him, in more of a hopeless than angry way. When Sam just looks down again, he says, "Seriously, Sam. What the fuck can I possibly say?"

Of course Sam has no answer to that. Staring ahead and trying to see nothing but the road, not certain images that Sam also has stored in his head from a different point of view, he suddenly feels about as sick and dizzyingly lost as he did all of that night after it happened. One of his hands sinks down from the steering wheel and lands heavily on his knee. "Shit," he breathes in a sad whisper. "I'm sorry."

Sam is looking out the window now, a still shape in the corner of Dean's eye. His voice quietly sneaks out carrying the same heavy tone of regret. "Me, too."

Meg had gotten away after they toasted Crowley, and then Sam had just walked away from him, and Dean was trying to start coming to grips with the fact that if Sam completely rejected this idea that they needed to get his soul back then there might not be anything more he could do for him. He was trying to tell himself he wasn't in charge of him, even if Sam was incomplete in a way that meant he couldn't even really help his own choices and was like an animal that didn't know any better and needed looking after. It seemed it was out of his hands now, and meanwhile he knew his own life might not yet be unsalvageable if he could tear himself away from all this long enough to look back.

So after getting back to his motel room alone and feeling so left adrift he could only pace around restlessly for the first few minutes, he called Lisa. He didn't even know what he could tell her now. If he said she'd been right about everything and he honestly regretted now that his brother had ever come back into his life again, that would just sound scary, she would never buy it. There was no answer anyway. It was better that way, putting it in her hands. She would see that he'd tried to reach her, and no message would mean there was no emergency, just an effort he was making to still try and do something which she could choose what to do with. She could call or not call.

When he'd promised Sam the things he did before they went through with their plan to screw Lucifer, neither of them could have known what would be in the cards later. They'd thought fate would have to finally be done with them once the world was saved. No matter how things turned out now, Dean would at least know he'd tried, as much as he could.

He went out for a while because he needed to get toothpaste and do some laundry and put his mind on something simple for just one night. When he got back to the motel room, Sam was there. He was sitting at the table with all the lights off except one lamp, like he was just waiting.

Standing in the doorway, Dean flipped the light switch and stared at him a moment. As he shut the door behind him and walked on in, he said distantly, "Assuming you're just here to get your stuff, don't-"

"I'm not," Sam interrupted.

He stopped and looked over at him again. "What?"

He shrugged. "I was going to split, but then I figured what's the point? So I'm not down with your plan to get my soul back. Big deal. It's not like you've got a good chance of pulling it off or could make me go along with it anyway. At least I'd like to see you try."

Getting into his duffel bag, Dean shook his head. "Right. We can just...be fine now, huh?"

"You really don't have a good grasp of how I see things, Dean. Maybe I don't care about anyone, but I can still prefer working with certain people as opposed to others. I know it's just plain stupid choosing to do anything on your own when you have other resources available. All things considered, you're a good hunter, and we don't make a bad team."

As he finished speaking, Sam got up and headed for the bathroom, not seeming to expect any kind of reply. Dean certainly didn't feel like bothering with one. He was just completely tired of dealing with him for now, couldn't manage to care or think much about this new development rather than just go along with it.

While Sam showered, he took off his jacket, shoes, and socks and got comfortable on his bed, keeping himself occupied working on a crossword puzzle in a week-old newspaper he still had around. (Starting and never finishing crosswords was one of the habits he'd unthinkably picked up during his year of stand-still white picket fence life; he sucked at them, but not quite as much as he would have expected.) Sam came out a while later, hair wet and slick, having changed back into nothing but his pants.

Dean was looking up momentarily with his mind wandering as Sam went over to the dresser where he'd set his bag to put the rest of his clothes away in it. He could see Sam's reflection in the mirror hung above the dresser, and somehow the tattoo on his chest caught his eye and made him stare a while.

He and Sam had gotten those tattoos for an important practical purpose, of course, and never would have wanted them otherwise. But when they discussed the idea years ago, it had seemed there was an unspoken understanding that as long as it was getting completely necessary to do it, they might as well make the most of it and let the things sort of mean something, too. It wasn't a long and difficult process or anything because neither of them was very picky about it, but that was why they'd made a point of coming up with a design they wouldn't entirely mind having on their bodies and threw out one or two possibilities until they actually agreed on one as well as where they would both get them. It was like it simply never occurred to them after the idea was brought up that they wouldn't want them to match.

It was disturbing and wrong somehow to see the tattoo now on this incomplete Sam's skin, reduced to nothing but its practicality on that body that was empty inside.

"Thought you weren't looking," Sam said tonelessly. He was looking at Dean's reflection in the mirror, obviously having caught his eyes on him.

Dean didn't bother getting too defensive or looking at him like he was crazy, even though Sam was actually definitely wrong and misreading the signals this time around. He didn't see any point. He just replied, "Not now, for Christ sakes."

"Oh, come on, Dean," Sam said, turning around and leaning back against the dresser, so at ease as usual. "What use do you think there still is in denying it? You've been thinking about it more lately than ever before, haven't you?"

"I know what you're doing, asshole," he said. He threw his paper to the side and swung his legs over the edge of the bed to sit up so that he could let his side face Sam instead.

"Well yeah, I'm not exactly trying to be coy, am I?"

"It's not as cute as you think it is. I know you've got some disadvantages in the area, but learn to take a hint. Back off."

Sam effortlessly ignored that, fixing him with a piercing gaze and going on. "You have been looking. 'Cause you can't help it. There's no reason not to."

"No reason not to kick your ass and shut you up right now," he muttered.

"So why don't you?" Sam asked, mocking and taunting. "Is it because it's actually kind of a relief being able to finally just hear it like this, out in the open like it's no big deal, instead of keeping it all buried inside? My God, I bet you can't imagine what it's like in here." He pointed up to his head. "No denial or wishful thinking or embarrassment. Just straightforward information without the complications. I'm sure everyone's got all kinds of crap jumbled up in their heads that they'd be able to sort out so easily without their soul holding them back from looking at it objectively. It's just all so obvious, everything Sam was always trying to forget about or making excuses to himself for like it didn't really mean anything."

Dean stayed stubbornly still as if he wasn't even listening, like Sam might shut up if he didn't honor any of this with a reply. Sam slowly started walking closer to him as he just went on meticulously picking away at him.

"But he was never the one who was fighting it the hardest, was he?" he said, his voice now deep and quiet. "Sammy, he didn't really have to care so much after a while because it was clear how determined and resolute you were about never letting it happen anyway. After a while it just kind of made him sad, watching you and understanding..." He sat on the other bed opposite from him, directly facing him and leaning inward as he spoke a little more quietly and Dean stubbornly avoided his eyes. "Poor Dean, always struggling. Always caught between your need to protect him and your desire for him, two things that could never be reconciled, God no, but it seemed would never completely let go of you either."

Dean rose from the bed in a quick movement, took a few steps away from Sam and then stopped with his back to him, not even knowing where to go.

"He'd become able to live with it a little easier than you," Sam said, and the turn his words were taking made Dean visibly cringe inward a little, crossing his arms. "Didn't like thinking about it much, knew nothing could come of it, but still...he knew what he wanted to do. Just sort of...got used to it."

Dean turned around and looked at him with what was probably the most forced-looking carelessness imaginable. "So what?" he said softly.

Sam shrugged as he got up and came a few steps toward him. "So I just think it's kind of funny, how your adamant resistance never even really did much good at all. I mean...even now you must wonder about it. What it would have been like, in some impossible circumstances that could ever make it easy or okay." His eyes briefly danced up and down his figure for a moment before he went on, his voice getting low and quiet again. "If it would have been as good as that certain twinge and itch always told you it would be-you know, the kind he could tell you were feeling whenever he would still sometimes catch you looking at him kind of uncomfortably, like he burned your eyes a little when he got too close or something...Because you still never have, never went as far as I'm sure you were inclined to with him, and apparently that's something that can keep two people hanging for years with shit like that still unresolved."

With building anger, Dean shook his head and said all in a rough tremor of words, "You think you know anything about it just because of what's in your head? You wouldn't know. You can't understand what you're talking about."

Sam just smirked a little and kept talking, edging in closer to him so that Dean was forced back to gradually step away into the dresser behind him. "Not to mention how much your selfless and noble refusal to give in just kind of made him want you more," he said. "Made him want so badly to give you some relief from all that turmoil and let you know it's okay somehow."

Dean actually jumped in surprise just a little when Sam suddenly leaned in close to him, resting both his hands on the dresser behind him and enclosing him. "The fuck are you doing," he said in a quick and quiet growl, but why he didn't just move, didn't try to say anything more, he didn't know.

"There's just no way to have that kind of conversation, right, but he'd still try to imagine how he could ever explain it," Sam said, leaning in toward his shoulder and practically talking right in his ear. "So many times he thought of just trying to tell you something like, oh, 'It's okay. Maybe it doesn't make any sense and I know what other people would think, but I know it isn't like that. I know you could never hurt me or use me or make me do anything. It's never been like that, you know you never even touched me before I started it...'"

And then Dean couldn't just stand there and listen any longer, because the way he said it with fake emotion, imitating the scared and desperate way he would have said it, it wasn't totally convincing but close enough to be an unexpected punch to his gut to hear. Before he knew it he was shoving Sam away and then swinging at his face with a clenched fist.

It was like Sam expected it. He caught and blocked his strike, then just as soon had thrown his own punch. Dean groaned in pain as it caught him right in the jaw and sent him stumbling to one side, not quite falling over. He immediately stood back up straight and glared angrily at Sam again, his blood running hot. Sam had a slight smirk on his face, looking gratified, as if this was all a game to him. Dean imagined he'd been wanting a chance to get back at Dean for beating the crap out of him after that incident with Veritas. That was all this was to him. The thought just made him even more pissed and sent him moving to hit him again.

But he was emotional, angrily provoked, and naturally Sam was feeling nothing at all. He missed Dean's second punch as well and soon had taken control and had Dean's back shoved against the wall, his arm holding him down across his neck.

"Yeah, he never could have really said that," he said, actually sounding almost a little excited now himself, "but he couldn't help but screw with himself sometimes by just thinking. And what would follow, maybe something like all the vivid dreams he had sometimes and felt bad about in the morning." He slid one hand down to his own cock, creasing his brow in an intentionally pained-looking expression as he cupped and rubbed himself through his pants to demonstrate as he added, "Or the things that would pop into his head when he was in the middle of jerking off, all sweaty and helpless and panting. Want to know, Dean?"

He lunged forcibly at Sam again, pushing him off of him, muttering, "You son of a-" He heard something crash and break, a lamp one of them had just knocked over onto the floor. He still couldn't get a hit, but in their intense struggle across the room he ended up throwing him to the floor and pinning him down.

"Don't fucking talk about him like you know anything about it," he said in a threatening, low voice as he shoved his shoulders back on the floor. Words started spilling out of him uncontrollably, without him even knowing what he was saying anymore. "Maybe you're nothing more than a sick fuck, but you got to remember more than that. I know it wasn't just about-wasn't like that-"

"Wasn't like what?" Before Dean could notice how he so easily knocked him off balance with a shove upward with his knee, Sam pushed him off of him and rolled them over until he was kneeling over Dean instead with his arms pinned down in place. "Wasn't like he used to think about slamming you up against a wall and then sliding down to his knees and sucking you, nice and slow until your legs go weak and you're mindlessly whining and begging for it?"

Keeping his arms held down firmly, Sam leaned over close to him and started kissing and then sucking at his neck. It drew a quick hiss of breath out of Dean that could only be a reaction to the pain, and yet...

"Or I guess it wasn't like he wanted to throw you to the ground once kind of like this, and then do this, that one night right after you'd just barely made it away from that haunted factory in Georgia both alive, and then without even undressing just get both of you off in his hand right then and there in the grass..."

Abruptly Dean managed to struggle free from him, but before he could completely sit up and push him away Sam just grabbed him at the shoulders and roughly pressed him down again, this time holding him in place with most of his body weight. As they were pressed much closer together then, Dean went a little still and swallowed, going loose all over with a sudden exhausted resignation; Sam moved on top of him, rubbing his hips along his just a little, and then without even having to look away from Dean's face he grinned wickedly with a short, deep laugh of self-satisfaction. Somehow in this time, without Dean knowing it while he was so obliviously enraged, they'd both gotten ridiculously hard.

Sam leaned down again immediately and started vigorously kissing him, all the while grinding their hips together repeatedly. And Dean didn't know or really care why, but he didn't stop him and kissed him back.

But it was terrible-kissing him, at least. The way Sam's mouth felt moving against his, the forceful but sort of empty energy of it, it was all wrong. It felt too demanding and too passive at the same time, so mechanical, while his real attention seemed to be on everything else their bodies were doing. It actually made him cringe inside and break away from him after a moment, pushing up against his chest and forcing him up roughly.

"Don't kiss me," he warned in a low, grating voice. Then as Sam watched in the following seconds that Dean proceeded to lift up his shirt and throw it off, he possibly looked even more thrilled than before.

Sam instead brought his warm open mouth back down to his neck, licking along his skin with the tip of his tongue and biting, as he started aggressively undoing the fly of Dean's jeans and then ripping them and his boxers down. Dean gasped lightly at the sudden sensation of the air on his skin when Sam pulled away from him just long enough to yank his jeans completely off. Then he just as quickly kneeled on all fours over him again and looked straight down at his face with an intense and almost unsettlingly steady gaze, and Dean's eyes instantly went wide when Sam then slid two fingers in his mouth, slicking them with spit. The sight made his lips part open with a breathless and silent gasp as Sam drew them in and out of his lips a couple times. Then he drew one of Dean's knees up and Dean automatically followed by bringing up the other leg around him too, swallowing in a kind of terrified and invigorated anticipation, before Sam reached down and slowly pressed his fingers into him.

"Mm-" Dean went rigid all over, his spine arching upward for a moment, and then made himself relax as much as he could and said in a barely comprehensible gasp, "Ohfuck..."

Sam had that vague smile again that made him want to throttle him, but then luckily he turned the attention of his mouth back to his neck, shoulders, and chest so that Dean didn't need to look at his face. Dean squirmed and gritted his teeth through the discomfort and pain and stabbing waves of arousal whenever Sam rubbed his fingers against the right spot, teasing him, working into him. With only his left hand to work with, Sam gradually got his own jeans pulled down to his knees and started stroking himself as he kept dragging his lips along Dean's skin all over. Dean turned his head to the side against the floor and dug his fingernails into the carpet through his building restrained moans and didn't think about anything.

Finally when he was in heavy and ragged breaths and Sam had started smoothing the whole length of his cock slick with precome, he couldn't take any more preamble, the laughable pretense that anything could possibly prepare him for this. He grabbed at Sam's hair and made him look up at him. "Gonna fucking do it or not?" he growled, but before all the words were even out Sam was grabbing his hips to roughly turn him over and then lift him up on his knees.

Dean moaned miserably as Sam pushed into him-What the hell are you doing what the HELL Dean-and he was already struggling to stay upright on all fours and not just collapse weakly as Sam started rocking him forward, splitting him open, making his vision go white with every thrust, No wait wait yes fuck oh God-

He found himself regretting that they were on this part of the floor because there was a full-length mirror over on the wall they were facing. When Dean caught a glance of it, he could see enough of the reflection of them to see what Sam looked like. He didn't have his eyes closed, they were just distant and unfocused, and his mouth was shut in a firm line that looked cruel somehow with the muscles in his jaw clenching every time he thrust into him. The image was so cold, so practically inhuman, that Dean had to look away. But he still kept seeing it the whole time, hearing the simple and primal noises of pleasure that came out of him after a while without shame or reserve.

When they were reaching the height of it Sam started moving faster and with a more purposeful force, both of them breathing in wild short heaves in a thick and filthy fog of mindless heat. Dean's cock was starting to ache and he lay his left forearm across the carpet to hold his weight while he reached to finally touch himself. But Sam immediately moved to push his hand away, reaching under him and taking him in his own firm grip. The aggressive contact was so unexpected it was almost unbearable, every strong and forceful stroke jerking his whole body hard like an electric shock and making him cry out uncontrollably on almost every beat of the rhythm dictated by Sam's hand.

It didn't take many to finish him off then, and through some of the last finishing tugs he groaned with his face sinking down toward the floor, "Mmph-Fff-Fuck you-" He heard Sam briefly laughing in that awful smug way again, made worse with how it now came out a little breathlessly amidst his shameless enjoyment as he was now getting close. As soon as he'd made him come he brought his hand back to grip Dean's hip hard again and then quickly followed him with a few more thrusts.

The most insane thing about this was that the following moments as they got dressed again were not awkward. Awkward would have been great. But as far as Dean cared, Sam might as well not have been in the room, and what he thought right now was the least of things darkening his head.

Sam wasn't in the room. That heavy truth was finally making itself at home in him, a suddenly fresh pain as if he'd never completely faced it until now. Only he was, settled somewhere deep in his chest where there was an unbearable tight ache, in a place that felt like it had just been torn at desperately by himself and left raw and open. Maybe he was here as long as Dean was, with this empty thing that looked like him, as long as Dean wasn't going to let him wander off and let himself stay so screwed up. He knew then that the only reason he hated him so much or felt any way about him at all was because he was Sam, in some way, or at least there was no way he would ever be able to stop seeing him that way.

He was completely fucked.

"Don't worry," Sam said casually when he was about to leave, talking to his back as he sat on one of the beds. "I know this isn't going to happen again...I'll be back in the morning."

Dean was so terrified of sitting still after he left him alone in the silence that he went out for a drive, going nowhere in particular, just to keep moving. He made his way around the roads in a daze, almost going right through a red light at one point. When he got back to the motel and was getting out of the car, he noticed his cellphone tossed onto the passenger seat where he must have forgotten it the last time he went out, and he put it in his pocket. As he went back in the room, he was still weirdly desensitized and detached, not remembering or noticing where all the pieces of glass were still covering the floor where the lamp had shattered until he stepped over them and heard them cracking more under his boots. Only after getting inside and sitting down did he look at his phone to check it for any messages.

Lisa had called him back.

Staring at the name on the caller ID, Dean felt something horrible finally coming to the surface over the numbness he'd been drifting around in for an hour. He closed his hand around his phone in a tight fist and dropped his forehead against it, closing his eyes with a tight grimace and just trying to breathe through it while his throat started feeling tight.

He needed a shower. He dropped his phone down on the bed and blinked away the moisture brimming in his eyes as he went into the bathroom.

Strangely enough, by the time he got in bed that night he'd come to some kind of sense of peace about the whole thing. Maybe he'd thoroughly shot himself in the foot now as far as still having a home with Lisa was concerned-how the hell could he even look her in the eyes now?-but if he really thought about it, it was probably better that something had forced him to face the end of that now as opposed to after drawing things out longer with her and making them even worse. He'd wanted to believe he could still make things right with her and Ben, but for a while now his hands had been tied too tight for him to be able to make any promises and it had all been completely indefinite. Dean was always more comfortable with a definite path, one he didn't find the need to question, and at least he wasn't torn between two things anymore. Right or wrong, he knew there was nothing else left for him but to stay with Sam and try to fix him.

As he lay in bed staring up at the ceiling in the dark, he tried to remember what it was really like to kiss Sam. It wasn't like there was any point in not thinking about it anymore, and it was more like masochistic self-punishment than indulgence to imagine it now anyway. He tried to recall everything in that dark college dorm room in detail, to remember if it hadn't felt so mechanical and disconnected, if it had been warmer, slower maybe. But the memory had always been a bit of an incoherent haze, and after all the years he'd kept it shut tight in his head like it had never happened, it was so hard now to see it and feel it the way it had really been.

One thing he could remember well was the sight of Sam asleep in bed in the morning, the way he left him, looking whole and content. And he looked over at the empty bed next to him and it was enough to tighten the ache in his chest terribly. It was the first time he realized it and how ridiculous it was, but all this time just out of habit he'd kept getting rooms with two beds everywhere he and Sam stayed, even though he'd known for a while that he never slept.

He would keep doing it, too. That soulless image of his brother would keep walking around no matter how much he wished he could just rest and disappear and finally give him peace. That and an empty bed next to his was all he had left.

Go to part IV.

.