The Family Business
The Family Business
Sam stared at his brother, his eyes travelling the long line of leg and strong thighs, his muscled chest and broad shoulders. When he reached his brother’s eyes it was like falling into a well after days of heat and thirst.
“Hey Dean. It’s been too long.” He said softly. He had no idea what his brother’s reaction would be to his sudden appearance after two years apart, but he wasn’t throwing punched just yet so that was a good sign.
“Sammy? How the hell?”
Sam smiled. “Just because the angels decided to stick you in the angelic bullpen until they needed you doesn’t mean I was just sitting around twiddling my thumbs.”
“Tell me you know how to get me out of here.”
“I can do a lot more than get you out of here Dean,” Sam said as he walked closer.
His brother looked concerned but then his eyes were trailing over him and Dean was wrapping his arms around him, holding him tight.
It happened sometimes, not often enough for Sam, but sometimes when times were bad, when hunts were bad, he found himself in his brother’s embrace, held tight like he had been as a child. It never failed to make him shiver, the feel of his brother against him, the love that so obviously came through in those moments. He wanted more and he thought, from the way his brother was holding on now, his plans just might work.
“You said no more demon blood,” Dean said as he backed away from Sam slowly. When Sam just watched him Dean’s face paled a little. “You did this without demon’s blood?”
“Ruby was right about one thing. I didn’t need the blood to make me strong. It was an addiction she fed me to keep me in line. It was easier that way, but it isn’t the only way. It isn’t even necessary now.”
“You can’t have him.”
Sam turned, noting with a smile that his brother turned with him, stepping up to stand side by side with him as Zachariah stared at them. “You think you can stop me?”
Zachariah’s face contorted in anger. “You might have found my brothers to be easier pickings, but I didn’t make my way up the ladder without knowing a trick or two.”
“Sam?”
“You aren’t the only one with a trick or two up his sleeve.” Sam ignored Dean’s question as he focused on the angel. He could feel the heart beating in the man he’d possessed, could feel the way the angel’s hands shook in rage across from him. He closed his eyes then, felt his brother’s shoulder brush his and he reached out for the things he couldn’t see, the connection between body and heaven, the grace that made the angel what he was.
He opened his eyes and saw the doubt in Zachariah’s face as Sam reached his hand out, his mental powers grabbing hold of the angel’s grace as he clenched his fingers tight. Zachariah fell to his knees as his power was ripped through his chest. The host fell as the angel did and Sam barely spared them a glance before looking at his brother.
Dean’s eyes were wide, the way the once had been when Sam had visions of death and his brother wanted to find a way to make it all go away. They weren’t filled with the horror they had been when he’d been drinking the blood and that made his next step easier.
He closed his eyes and concentrated and the room changed. It was his now, his place of peace and security. Zachariah wasn’t the only angel Sam had killed to get to his brother, no matter if he had been the easiest. The angel was an ass and he wasn’t at all sorry Zachariah had been the last one guarding Dean.
When he opened his eyes they were in a motel room, nicer than their normal fare, but not enough to spook Dean too much.
“How’d you do that Sam?”
“Once the person controlling the room is dead, it’s easy enough to force it to do what you want?”
“How did you kill the angel?”
Sam looked at Dean and sighed. “It’s not much different from removing a demon from a human body. You just have to pull out the grace and the angel is gone.”
“Who taught you how to do that?”
Sam sighed. “It doesn’t matter Dean,” he answered, knowing his brother would despise his answer. Anna hadn’t been very forthcoming with the information but when he’d used Castiel as leverage, she’d broken. She’d been the first angel he’d killed. Castiel had been the second, after he’d been beaten down and turned Sam couldn’t trust him. He’d helped bring Anna to Sam and taught him how to find others, but he’d had no loyalty by then. Sam had broken him of that good. He just wished he’d been able to do it without breaking the angel completely. It would have been a good gesture to give him to Dean before the end, but nothing could change the strength of the angel’s will and how hard Sam had gotten to get what he needed.
“You’re safe now, from the angels and demons. No one is coming after you ever again.”
“Really? That’s an awfully big promise Sam. Something you need to tell me?”
“Like?”
“Like when you said yes?”
“I didn’t Dean.”
“Then how can you tell me no one else is coming?”
“Because they know better. I’m strong Dean,” he said softly, coming to stand beside his brother. “I’m going to protect you now.”
“Sam, I’m not staying in this room forever. I didn’t get out of an angel’s holding cell just to stay in yours.”
“I don’t expect you too. I figure in the morning we can head out and find a hunt, but for tonight, we could use a good night’s rest, alright?”
Dean looked at him like he suspected something might be wrong, but in the end, he agreed.
The next morning the road beckoned and Dean’s smile was breathtaking as he looked back from the Impala to Sam. He smiled back, more than willing to be in the passenger seat again, letting his brother put the miles on.
Lunch was a diner and greasy burgers and dinner was pizza. They stared at the television making crack comments from across the two beds and Sam had never felt more at home. Dean never woke to hear the incantations he whispered over his head as he slept nor did he ever see the small vial of liquid he shook over his brother’s food when he got up from the table. He didn’t need to know. Sam was taking care of him now.
It took another three months to fall into his brother’s arms again. It was just their luck, finding an over excited ghoul in the cemetery they were trying to work the salt and burn in, but he’d smelled blood and come running for it. They were both fine, but it was the first time one of them had been injured since they’d come back together and Sam just breathed deeply of his brother’s scent, letting his lips brush lightly against Dean’s neck as if it were an accident. Dean shivered from the contact and stepped back quickly.
Sam didn’t apologize, but looked up at Dean as he licked his lips for the small trace of Dean there. Dean stepped away again but he didn’t say anything about it, just went out and got good and drunk than night.
Nothing changes immediately, but he never expected it would. What he’s been doing isn’t to change his brother; it’s to make him strong enough to face the things they fight, the things that no mortal could possible stand up against. A demon had made sure Sam wasn’t mortal enough to fall. Sam was just making a similar choice for Dean.
The first time they had to share a bed in a dingy little motel in Hartford, IA Sam woke to find his brother’s arms around him again and he feigned sleep for another two hours just to stay there. The angels were leaving them alone, demons rarely came across their path, and they were happy hunting together.
“What are you doing to me Sammy?’ Dean asked softly as he looked down at Sam.
He was surprised that Dean knew he was awake, but even more surprised by the question. “Whatdya mean?” he slurred out.
“Things are changing. You’re changing me. Why?”
Sam sat up on one elbow and looked down at his brother. Dean didn’t try to move away, in fact he surprised Sam again by brushing his fingers down Sam’s neck and across his collarbone.
“Dean, I … I would never make you into something like me,” he said softly. He knew his strengths and weaknesses, knew how his brother felt about each and every one of them, and he would never hurt Dean like that. He would never make him something that he despised.
“I had to do something to keep you from being hurt. It isn’t demon blood.”
“I know Sam. Just tell me what it is.”
“Angel blood,” he said softly. “I figure, Lucifer and Michael are never going to stop the apocalypse so why shouldn’t we? I’m the host of hell and you are the host of heaven. Why can’t we take that strength and use it to stop it all ourselves?”
“And the rest of this?” Dean asked.
He knew what Dean was talking about, the need to be close to his brother, the way he felt in his arms, the way he imagined he would feel under him. “I … It’s not part of that. It’s just me and you Dean. It’s where we’ve always been headed, I just stopped caring if it was right or not.”
“So, we take the power of heaven and hell and throw it back in their faces?”
“Yep.”
“We save a lot of people?”
“Yep.”
“And we get laid in the process?”
Sam smiled at the way his brother said it because as much as he’d expected Dean to capitulate, he’d expected to have to take more time to work him into it.
“Yeah.”
Dean looked at him a second and then Sam found himself being flipped over onto his back with his brother pinning him down.
“You have any idea how bored I was in that room? Have any idea what I imagined doing when I got out?”
Sam shook his head, afraid to break the mood or to find out his brother was just setting him up for some kind of prank.
“You. Thought of the one thing that might actually get me kicked out of heaven so they would let me go, try to make myself unworthy of Michael, but it didn’t work. What it did do, was give me plenty of time to imagine what this would be like.”
Sam smiled up at Dean and then Dean was pressing him back into the mattress, his lips crashing into Sam’s. Sam opened to him immediately and he could feel Dean’s fingers tangling in his hair. Dean licked his way into Sam’s lips and they were wrapped tight around one another, no beginning or end, just Sam and Dean as they had always been.
That night as they lay in each other’s arms, heaven sent angels to stop them. Hell sent demons. Sam and Dean met them both. When it was over, they stood together, coated in the blood of the immortals, and knew they were doing the right thing. They were still brothers, still just two men in a world turning on it’s head as a war raged unannounced around them, but they were Sam and Dean. As they had always been, so they should ever be. Saving people. Hunting things. Keeping up the family business.