SPN/DA Fic: Incandesce 2 of ?
Title: Incandesce part 1 - part 2 - part 3 - part 4 - part 5 - part 6 - part 7 - part 8 - ?
sequel to: With a Bang and The Aftershocks and Not a Whimper and The Ripple Effects
Author: Mink
Rating: SPN/DA Crossover - R - Gen - AU in the year 2020
Spoilers: General (for all aired episodes)
Disclaimers: SPN & DA characters are owned by their various creators.
Summary: Sam POV. Alec unexpectedly goes into Heat. This is a problem.
Sprawled on the floor, Sam dragged his arm through the broken glass and debris to check the cracked display on his watch.
It’d been one hell of a night.
There was a reason most people used a basement when they desired privacy with another living thing. Sam himself was a big fan of the useless windows lining the ceiling that a child could barely fit through. The lack of real exits helped too. However, most people probably picked basements for the simple fact that most tenants usually ignored the sound of screaming even if it was coming from their own building.
“That one’s gonna leave a mark,” Sam cupped Alec’s face and let his thumb trace the purple bruise darkening his jaw. He took the opportunity to test the old leather belt he‘d found. Fastened around Alec‘s waist, the cracked leather was doing a good job at keeping his hands pinned high behind his back. “A real bad mark.”
“It’s okay. It’s fine,” Alec absently rubbed his bleeding cheek against the floor. “They fade fast.”
Sam was getting his second wind but he hoped he wouldn’t be needing it.
He couldn’t recall exactly when Dean had left, but he knew it had been a while ago. The lack of light made it real hard to gauge time. Besides a bare bulb that hung on a frayed cord from the rafters, nothing but the motel’s neon sign seeped in all the way down here, flickering through the painted glass where the black primer had flecked off.
“Don't do that, Alec. You’re making it worse.” Sam touched the wound even though it would deliver more of the pheromone to his system. “Maybe I should go. I could find Dean and-”
“You said you wouldn’t leave,” Alec said. “You said you’d stay.”
Sam didn’t like the way Alec said it. He’s said it as if he’d just been waiting for when Sam would make bad on his promise and betray him. Sliding his hands together, Sam let the transgenic blood coat his skin and release the pleasing odor as if he were crushing petals from a rose. It was getting harder and harder to ignore the scent building up in this cramped room. All Sam had to do was walk up those stairs and find the first woman he had enough cash to pay for.
There were plenty of prostitutes in this part of town.
And she didn’t even have to be willing-
“Sam?”
“Yeah,” Sam cleared his thoughts. “I’m not leaving.”
“I-I should let you know that all of this will get worse.”
Wishing Alec hadn’t chosen to volunteer that particular piece of news, he tried to settle into a more comfortable seat on the concrete floor. Alec had also mentioned several times that the stark accommodations had reminded him a whole lot of the good old days.
Manticore.
Everything Sam could remember reading about Manticore’s breeding program had stated the ordeal typically lasted for 24 hours. The process for DNA re-selection had been mentioned in almost every single one of their stolen databases. But up until now Sam had had no real grasp on what those simple words had actually meant.
“Sometimes we got entertainment,” Alec said softly. “They’d pipe in music through the intercom. Real calm shit like Pelléas et Mélisande, Op. 80: Sicilienne.”
“You like that kind of music?”
“A-Are you kidding?” Alec forced a laugh as he tried to curl tighter into a ball. “Gabriel Fauré is for old ladies and middle school violin recitals.”
Sam was glad that Alec had seemed to have crested the latest surge of madness and was now sliding down into a nice non-combative period of lucidity. Growing still on the dank concrete, Alec turned away from Sam and began flexing his trapped fists.
“Tell me more about the music, Alec,” Sam wanted to keep tabs on his son's fluctuating sanity. “Try and describe every piece of music that you’ve ever heard-”
“Triple Diamond formation,” Alec interrupted. “Keep your snipers back in the cover and then split ranks 10 clicks due east. Use the river to cover our numbers. Enemy will never see us coming.”
Military maneuvers.
It wasn’t music but it was better than nothing. Sam listened to the code and jargon that Manticore had taught its children, half interested in their tactics and methodologies. Sometimes it sounded as if Alec were addressing officers themselves, and others times it was clear that he was speaking to nothing but the walls. But as difficult as it was listen his son’s hallucinations, it was preferable to the alternative.
Fighting.
Sam wasn’t eager to start that up again.
Luckily for them all, the energy Sam had housed in his mind was powerful enough to keep Alec under control. However, Sam remembered a time not so long ago when he could have restrained Alec without this much effort. The first hour of the struggle schooled Sam thoroughly on all the new tricks his son had picked up since they’d first met. And Alec had pulled out all the stops when he realized Sam had no intentions of letting him leave the cellar. What little had been stored in the motel’s basement was smashed and strewn all over the floor, along with a few support beams now bent at alarming angles. They were lucky to even have a ceiling over their heads.
Sam shut his eyes with a sigh.
After they had gotten finished it was a lucky thing that the entire surrounding city block was still standing.
“S-Sam?”
“Yeah Alec, I’m right here.”
“Okay,” he sounded relieved. “So am I.”
Sam had watched cautiously as the fevered look in his son's eyes faded into something less focused. Alec's hoarse voice came in stops and starts, a barely coherent babble that Sam understood were more methods for self-distraction. But after another hour went by he begun to occasionally hear words that started to make more sense.
Calm. Control. Perseverance.
There were hundreds of phrases and chopped up quotations from Alec’s training lectures and other contraband literature he’d absorbed without Manticore’s permission. And down here in the dark it was all being recited as reverently and as hopefully as any magical pieces of Latin. Sam watched in the shadows as Alec tested the leather strap that kept his wrists secured behind his back. Still talking in an undecipherable whisper, Sam decided to very carefully place a hand on Alec’s heaving side.
The rambling babble abruptly ceased.
“Don‘t,” Alec breathed. “Don’t touch me.”
“I’m sorry.”
Sam sat back again and glanced at his withdrawn hand as if the pheromones could leave some smear of color behind from the contact. Mindful not to touch his own face with it, he wiped his hand off on the thigh of his pajama pants instead. His watch said it was getting close to the afternoon but he didn’t want to leave and find clothes. Wondering why he was being so careful with one hand when most of his body had been in contact with Alec, he let his head thud hard a couple of times against the wall behind him.
“Why aren’t you locking me up?” Alec asked. “Why aren’t you leaving me alone?”
“You asked me not to,” Sam said. “Remember?”
“Since when do I have good ideas?” Alec had tried to get as far from Sam as he could. “Since when do you even listen to me?”
The leather strap wasn’t going to keep a man like his son subdued forever, and if Sam had the handcuffs that Alec had already suggested several times he would have used them. But right now all he’d had to do had been accomplished with another kind of force, and currently his presence was the only thing keeping that the case. Besides, he didn’t want to think about it too much, but he actually wasn’t sure if it would be a great idea for him to leave the confines of the cellar either.
Sam rubbed his knuckles into his eyes and attempted the impossible act of not thinking.
He willed his muscles to relax though it didn‘t help very much. With deep even breathing he could even pretend the sweat rolling down the middle of his back was just from the summer heat leaking down into the cool cellar.
But he couldn’t ignore everything.
“What did Manticore do, Alec?”
“What?”
“Besides performing lock downs?” Sam suddenly needed to know. “How did they handle it when they had entire squads going through this?”
Alec rolled over and regarded him with glassy eyes.
“Sometimes they left us all in the same place.” Alec said. “They were real big on efficiency.”
Sam realized he was clenching his jaw and attempted to stop.
“And no,” Alec said softly. “I don’t have any.”
“Any what?”
“Children,” he answered. “That I know of.”
Sam didn’t want to tell him that one of the good things about Manticore was the agency’s talent for relentless record keeping. And according to those records Alec was correct. Of course, that didn’t take into account all the time Alec had spent outside of their supervision and the year he’d been by himself in the city. But Sam decided now was not the time to dwell on hypothetical grandkids and got back to trying to concentrate on the problem at hand.
Or try not to concentrate on it. Or at least try not to - Alec’s steady litany of military formations faltered with his real thoughts simmering less than a centimeter under the surface of flimsy distractions. Sam groaned when Alec did, the unexpected amplification of his needs and wants getting stronger and more intense as it passed between them.
“Come on,” Sam squeezed his eyes shut again as if it would help. “Alec, please? Try to hold on until Dean gets back and then-”
He jumped when his cell phone rang in the quiet. Fumbling to answer it, he already knew what to say to his brother. “What took you so long?”
“Did I miss anything?” Dean asked. “Wait, scrap that. I don’t wanna know.”
Sam snapped his phone closed in annoyance when he realized he could hear Dean’s boots pounding down the wooden stairs of the upper floor. But his relief upon seeing him appear at the top of the steps quickly shifted into apprehension. It was cool down in the deep cellar but the city above was going through a heat wave, sticking his brother’s black T-shirt in a V to his chest and back. His jeans were creased with sweat and the temperature had even made the leather in his boots smell sharper.
It took almost everything Sam had not to grab Dean by his shirt and pull the smell of him closer. “Did you get the stuff?” he asked. “All of it?”
“Sure did,” Dean handed over a backpack. “He okay?”
“No,” Alec answered miserably for himself. “And stay the hell over there.”
“But it’s safe now, right?“ Dean backed up anyway. “He’s tied up and-”
“A-And don’t talk about me like I’m not here,” Alec said. “Just because I’m a lunatic doesn’t mean I’m deaf.”
Alec quickly proved his own point by lapsing back into another stream of nonsensical muttering. Kneeling on the floor, Sam dug through the backpack and found a dozen loaded hypodermic needles and plenty of extra vials of some suspiciously unlabeled drug.
“I got all the good stuff,” Dean said with a tinge of pride. “But easy on the dosages. This shit can put you in a permanent coma.”
Sam tried to listen and not concentrate on the clean scent of Dean’s sweat. Glancing over at Alec, he saw his son didn’t seem to be reacting to Dean at all. For now. Flicking the needle, Sam warned Alec softly about what was coming. The warning worked better in his head than in spoken words, but he said it out of habit anyway. Alec didn’t so much as blink when the syringe slid into his trembling arm. With eyes half closed, he watched another vial empty into his vein before he asked anything about it.
“How long does it take?”
“Logan said it should take just a couple seconds,” Dean said. “You should be feeling it already.”
“I feel it,” Alec did sound sleepy. “Feels like home.”
“Hang in there, Alec,” Dean rubbed a hand through Alec’s hair. “You hear me?”
Sam could see by Alec’s heightened respiration that he could perceive a lot more about Dean than sight and sound. In fact, Sam thought now was a great time for his brother to back off and let the drugs do their work. He was supremely uninterested in using up what was left of their luck, and Dean’s unawareness of how dangerous Alec had become was making him nervous.
Sam flexed his fists at his sides.
His brother didn’t give him anything but a wary look when Sam pulled him to his feet and hauled him to the other side of the room.
“Sorry it took me so long,” Dean let out a strange laugh. “This stuff was hard to score. Even for Logan.”
Studying his brother’s eyes and the easy stance of his body, Sam could see that Dean wasn’t feeling each and every sensation Alec was broadcasting like Sam was. Sitting in an unventilated room filled with a transgenic pheromone had settled Sam close to some kind of insanity himself. The knowledge that he could find relief with (paid or otherwise) company had ceased to be a strange idea many hours ago. And he was glad he was at least aware that his thought process was being further affected every time he inhaled another lungful of the tainted air.
“Is the kid still dosing you with…“ Dean looked at him sideways. “With whatever crosses his mind?”
“I’m trying not to listen to him,” Sam told him. “It’s not easy but I can do it.”
“What, like some kinda ESP blackout?”
“Hey, did you notice anyone else outside getting it?” Sam frowned. “You know, looking like-”
“Lookin’ for love in all the wrong faces?” Dean shrugged. “No idea. Half the girls on the street up there are workin’ and the rest aren’t even girls.”
“I need to talk to you alone for a second,” Sam looked uneasily over his shoulder. “Upstairs.”
“Why? Are we gonna make out?”
“I mean it,” Sam hadn’t meant to grab Dean’s wrist that hard, the sweat on their skin making it easy for Dean to twist free. “This is serious.”
“Oh yeah, I get that,” Dean turned back to the stairs. “Just wonderin’ if you do.”
“No…” Alec was panting again, harsh and short against the ground. “Don’t go.”
“We’re just going up there for a few,” Dean told him. “We’ll be back before you know it.”
“You think we can’t tell time when you keep us in the dark.” Alec tried to sit up, the belt binding his arms making it impossible to do much else besides roll over. “But we count. I count. I count weeks go by and they still tell me that its just a few days. Then I start screaming and then they add an extra day every time I make a sound--”
“Alec, listen to me,” Dean said steadily. “Listen to the sound of my voice. Do you remember where you are?”
“Want to see what happened when I complained?” Alec asked. “Complaining isn’t like leaving a note in the suggestion box at the office. Complaining is what happens when you raise your voice. Complaining is when you start begging. Do you wanna see?”
“I vote no,” Dean raised his hand. “Sammy does too.”
It was too late. Images of serrated flesh, gaping wounds and burns came as clear as the real thing right before Sam and Dean’s eyes. Then there was the pain afterwards in the dark holding cells where all an X5 could hear was their own shallow breathing. Sometimes one of the less intelligent guards would open the cells and slip inside when no one was monitoring them.
“Jesus, Alec,” Dean had a hand over his mouth. “Stop. Please, stop it.”
“Those guards usually died,” Alec sounded like he was fighting sleep now, the drugs coursing through his blood stream and pulling him under. “Ripped to pieces. Or worse.”
Sam couldn’t see his son’s face in the dark, but he knew when Alec was smiling.
“There’s more,“ Alec slurred. “Want to see what they did to the X5s that tried to escape?”
Dean didn’t even get a chance to politely decline this time. Sam winced and Dean cursed, the next grotesque pictures striking without censor from Alec’s brain and sizzling through the air like a hot knife through butter. Sam pressed the palms of his hands over his eyes until the images quickly reverted from carnage and back to the carnal. Bodies in various states of undress were intertwined, filling the air with whispered promises of release that made Sam‘s face burn red. It had been easier to witness the violence that had befallen the moronic guards than try to blot this stuff out. Trying to stifle the coy voices and grasp of hungry hands, Sam heard his brother voice the same.
“I can’t do this…” Dean had sagged down to the floor. “We-We can’t keep doing this.”
Sam was in full agreement on that one.
He grabbed Dean under the elbow and pulled his arm high enough to make it uncomfortable to walk up the narrow stairs. His brother was in enough of a daze to follow without complaint as they stumbled up to the sweltering first floor of the motel lobby. Sam swallowed back the bitter smell of melting asphalt blowing in sluggishly through a window down the hall. Squinting at the bright yellow sunlight, Sam wondered how long he’d actually been down there sitting by Alec‘s side. He hadn’t quite meant to push his brother that hard up the last few steps, and he really hadn‘t meant to finish the trip by slamming Dean against the wall.
But he hadn’t let go of his brother either.
“I was kiddin’ about the making out part,” Dean tried an uneasy smile. “Let me go, Sam.”
Leaning into the hollow of his neck Sam could really smell him. Under the city dirt, cheap motel soap and everything else, there was just Dean.
“I-I said let go,” Dean tried to yank his arm away but failed. “Logan gave me a contact number and I think we should use it. There might be a chemist livin’ in town that actually built some of the stuff they used on X5s. Are you listening to me?”
Sam liked the waver of fear in his brother’s voice.
“I’m not gonna ask you nice again,” Dean warned him softly. “Lemme go-ah!”
It was far more sensible to subdue with the power Sam housed in his mind rather than using his physical body. The flow of energy he could manipulate to restrain any human being would cost them both nothing but a mild headache. And maybe not even that much anymore. Sam had backed Dean up about as far as he could go in the alcove provided by the window. Glancing out the traffic waning with the peak of the afternoon. Hundreds of people were walking by below on the sidewalk and not a single one of them was looking up.
“Sammy?”
When Dean’s tense weight began to crumple in Sam’s arms, he knew deep down that it was wrong to experience pleasure at seeing the growing panic in his brother’s eyes. Sam knew Dean well, and the last time he’d seen him this lost and confused was on that day back in Blue Earth. That was the day he’d gently reached into Dean’s head and made everything better by taking his memories away. But Sam was planning on taking a lot more than that this time.
And from the look in Dean’s eyes, he knew his brother understood that too.
“There’s nobody here, Dean,” Sam wasn’t sure what he meant by that. No one to hear Dean, or no one to interrupt Sam. Maybe both.
“S-Sammy, you lost it,” Dean‘s thoughts were starting to scatter as Sam forced his brother‘s will to weaken just like his body had. “You and Alec, I dunno, you guys are made of the same stuff, and I think he can make you crazy… L-Listen to me Sam! He can make you think what he thinks… please…. please listen to me…”
“I can make you think things too,” Sam assured him. “Make you see anything I want.”
Dean’s body stiffened in his arms as Sam allowed the assault of sensations to flow unchecked between them. They now could both hear Alec’s thoughts murmuring from the basement. He was telling Sam to take what he wanted. He told him not to stop with Dean but take what he desired from anyone who crossed his path. There was no reason to sit around and think about it either. And these days, Alec calmly reminded him, they didn’t even have to get their hands dirty if they didn’t want to. Men like them could paralyze and use someone all up without even looking their victim once in the eye…
Dean was on his knees, struggling to stay upright when Sam was doing his best to force him down into perfect compliancy. Sam’s head was starting to throb with the onslaught and it occurred to him somewhere in the back of his mind what it might feel like to someone like Dean who never had done anything like it before. Studying Dean’s frantic eyes, he listened to him make a strange choking sound that Sam might have said was crying if it wasn’t coming from his own brother.
Sam wiped at something wet on his upper lip and realized his nose was bleeding.
“This isn’t you, Sammy,” Dean gasped. “This isn’t you. This isn‘t you. This isn‘t you-”
Sam stopped the prayer by sliding a hand over Dean’s mouth. He was so distracted by what he was about to do next that he didn’t even hear the front door until the screen door banged against the wall. It swung on its rusty hinges and stayed there, propped open by the woman who had kicked it open.
He knew the transgenic immediately even if the last time he’d seen her face it had been almost unrecognizable with bruises.
Max.
“What are you doing here?” he asked. “You should leave.”
With a half smile, she cupped a fist and cracked her knuckles.
“Don’t worry,” she grinned. “House calls always cost extra.”
tbc
sequel to: With a Bang and The Aftershocks and Not a Whimper and The Ripple Effects
Author: Mink
Rating: SPN/DA Crossover - R - Gen - AU in the year 2020
Spoilers: General (for all aired episodes)
Disclaimers: SPN & DA characters are owned by their various creators.
Summary: Sam POV. Alec unexpectedly goes into Heat. This is a problem.
Sprawled on the floor, Sam dragged his arm through the broken glass and debris to check the cracked display on his watch.
It’d been one hell of a night.
There was a reason most people used a basement when they desired privacy with another living thing. Sam himself was a big fan of the useless windows lining the ceiling that a child could barely fit through. The lack of real exits helped too. However, most people probably picked basements for the simple fact that most tenants usually ignored the sound of screaming even if it was coming from their own building.
“That one’s gonna leave a mark,” Sam cupped Alec’s face and let his thumb trace the purple bruise darkening his jaw. He took the opportunity to test the old leather belt he‘d found. Fastened around Alec‘s waist, the cracked leather was doing a good job at keeping his hands pinned high behind his back. “A real bad mark.”
“It’s okay. It’s fine,” Alec absently rubbed his bleeding cheek against the floor. “They fade fast.”
Sam was getting his second wind but he hoped he wouldn’t be needing it.
He couldn’t recall exactly when Dean had left, but he knew it had been a while ago. The lack of light made it real hard to gauge time. Besides a bare bulb that hung on a frayed cord from the rafters, nothing but the motel’s neon sign seeped in all the way down here, flickering through the painted glass where the black primer had flecked off.
“Don't do that, Alec. You’re making it worse.” Sam touched the wound even though it would deliver more of the pheromone to his system. “Maybe I should go. I could find Dean and-”
“You said you wouldn’t leave,” Alec said. “You said you’d stay.”
Sam didn’t like the way Alec said it. He’s said it as if he’d just been waiting for when Sam would make bad on his promise and betray him. Sliding his hands together, Sam let the transgenic blood coat his skin and release the pleasing odor as if he were crushing petals from a rose. It was getting harder and harder to ignore the scent building up in this cramped room. All Sam had to do was walk up those stairs and find the first woman he had enough cash to pay for.
There were plenty of prostitutes in this part of town.
And she didn’t even have to be willing-
“Sam?”
“Yeah,” Sam cleared his thoughts. “I’m not leaving.”
“I-I should let you know that all of this will get worse.”
Wishing Alec hadn’t chosen to volunteer that particular piece of news, he tried to settle into a more comfortable seat on the concrete floor. Alec had also mentioned several times that the stark accommodations had reminded him a whole lot of the good old days.
Manticore.
Everything Sam could remember reading about Manticore’s breeding program had stated the ordeal typically lasted for 24 hours. The process for DNA re-selection had been mentioned in almost every single one of their stolen databases. But up until now Sam had had no real grasp on what those simple words had actually meant.
“Sometimes we got entertainment,” Alec said softly. “They’d pipe in music through the intercom. Real calm shit like Pelléas et Mélisande, Op. 80: Sicilienne.”
“You like that kind of music?”
“A-Are you kidding?” Alec forced a laugh as he tried to curl tighter into a ball. “Gabriel Fauré is for old ladies and middle school violin recitals.”
Sam was glad that Alec had seemed to have crested the latest surge of madness and was now sliding down into a nice non-combative period of lucidity. Growing still on the dank concrete, Alec turned away from Sam and began flexing his trapped fists.
“Tell me more about the music, Alec,” Sam wanted to keep tabs on his son's fluctuating sanity. “Try and describe every piece of music that you’ve ever heard-”
“Triple Diamond formation,” Alec interrupted. “Keep your snipers back in the cover and then split ranks 10 clicks due east. Use the river to cover our numbers. Enemy will never see us coming.”
Military maneuvers.
It wasn’t music but it was better than nothing. Sam listened to the code and jargon that Manticore had taught its children, half interested in their tactics and methodologies. Sometimes it sounded as if Alec were addressing officers themselves, and others times it was clear that he was speaking to nothing but the walls. But as difficult as it was listen his son’s hallucinations, it was preferable to the alternative.
Fighting.
Sam wasn’t eager to start that up again.
Luckily for them all, the energy Sam had housed in his mind was powerful enough to keep Alec under control. However, Sam remembered a time not so long ago when he could have restrained Alec without this much effort. The first hour of the struggle schooled Sam thoroughly on all the new tricks his son had picked up since they’d first met. And Alec had pulled out all the stops when he realized Sam had no intentions of letting him leave the cellar. What little had been stored in the motel’s basement was smashed and strewn all over the floor, along with a few support beams now bent at alarming angles. They were lucky to even have a ceiling over their heads.
Sam shut his eyes with a sigh.
After they had gotten finished it was a lucky thing that the entire surrounding city block was still standing.
“S-Sam?”
“Yeah Alec, I’m right here.”
“Okay,” he sounded relieved. “So am I.”
Sam had watched cautiously as the fevered look in his son's eyes faded into something less focused. Alec's hoarse voice came in stops and starts, a barely coherent babble that Sam understood were more methods for self-distraction. But after another hour went by he begun to occasionally hear words that started to make more sense.
Calm. Control. Perseverance.
There were hundreds of phrases and chopped up quotations from Alec’s training lectures and other contraband literature he’d absorbed without Manticore’s permission. And down here in the dark it was all being recited as reverently and as hopefully as any magical pieces of Latin. Sam watched in the shadows as Alec tested the leather strap that kept his wrists secured behind his back. Still talking in an undecipherable whisper, Sam decided to very carefully place a hand on Alec’s heaving side.
The rambling babble abruptly ceased.
“Don‘t,” Alec breathed. “Don’t touch me.”
“I’m sorry.”
Sam sat back again and glanced at his withdrawn hand as if the pheromones could leave some smear of color behind from the contact. Mindful not to touch his own face with it, he wiped his hand off on the thigh of his pajama pants instead. His watch said it was getting close to the afternoon but he didn’t want to leave and find clothes. Wondering why he was being so careful with one hand when most of his body had been in contact with Alec, he let his head thud hard a couple of times against the wall behind him.
“Why aren’t you locking me up?” Alec asked. “Why aren’t you leaving me alone?”
“You asked me not to,” Sam said. “Remember?”
“Since when do I have good ideas?” Alec had tried to get as far from Sam as he could. “Since when do you even listen to me?”
The leather strap wasn’t going to keep a man like his son subdued forever, and if Sam had the handcuffs that Alec had already suggested several times he would have used them. But right now all he’d had to do had been accomplished with another kind of force, and currently his presence was the only thing keeping that the case. Besides, he didn’t want to think about it too much, but he actually wasn’t sure if it would be a great idea for him to leave the confines of the cellar either.
Sam rubbed his knuckles into his eyes and attempted the impossible act of not thinking.
He willed his muscles to relax though it didn‘t help very much. With deep even breathing he could even pretend the sweat rolling down the middle of his back was just from the summer heat leaking down into the cool cellar.
But he couldn’t ignore everything.
“What did Manticore do, Alec?”
“What?”
“Besides performing lock downs?” Sam suddenly needed to know. “How did they handle it when they had entire squads going through this?”
Alec rolled over and regarded him with glassy eyes.
“Sometimes they left us all in the same place.” Alec said. “They were real big on efficiency.”
Sam realized he was clenching his jaw and attempted to stop.
“And no,” Alec said softly. “I don’t have any.”
“Any what?”
“Children,” he answered. “That I know of.”
Sam didn’t want to tell him that one of the good things about Manticore was the agency’s talent for relentless record keeping. And according to those records Alec was correct. Of course, that didn’t take into account all the time Alec had spent outside of their supervision and the year he’d been by himself in the city. But Sam decided now was not the time to dwell on hypothetical grandkids and got back to trying to concentrate on the problem at hand.
Or try not to concentrate on it. Or at least try not to - Alec’s steady litany of military formations faltered with his real thoughts simmering less than a centimeter under the surface of flimsy distractions. Sam groaned when Alec did, the unexpected amplification of his needs and wants getting stronger and more intense as it passed between them.
“Come on,” Sam squeezed his eyes shut again as if it would help. “Alec, please? Try to hold on until Dean gets back and then-”
He jumped when his cell phone rang in the quiet. Fumbling to answer it, he already knew what to say to his brother. “What took you so long?”
“Did I miss anything?” Dean asked. “Wait, scrap that. I don’t wanna know.”
Sam snapped his phone closed in annoyance when he realized he could hear Dean’s boots pounding down the wooden stairs of the upper floor. But his relief upon seeing him appear at the top of the steps quickly shifted into apprehension. It was cool down in the deep cellar but the city above was going through a heat wave, sticking his brother’s black T-shirt in a V to his chest and back. His jeans were creased with sweat and the temperature had even made the leather in his boots smell sharper.
It took almost everything Sam had not to grab Dean by his shirt and pull the smell of him closer. “Did you get the stuff?” he asked. “All of it?”
“Sure did,” Dean handed over a backpack. “He okay?”
“No,” Alec answered miserably for himself. “And stay the hell over there.”
“But it’s safe now, right?“ Dean backed up anyway. “He’s tied up and-”
“A-And don’t talk about me like I’m not here,” Alec said. “Just because I’m a lunatic doesn’t mean I’m deaf.”
Alec quickly proved his own point by lapsing back into another stream of nonsensical muttering. Kneeling on the floor, Sam dug through the backpack and found a dozen loaded hypodermic needles and plenty of extra vials of some suspiciously unlabeled drug.
“I got all the good stuff,” Dean said with a tinge of pride. “But easy on the dosages. This shit can put you in a permanent coma.”
Sam tried to listen and not concentrate on the clean scent of Dean’s sweat. Glancing over at Alec, he saw his son didn’t seem to be reacting to Dean at all. For now. Flicking the needle, Sam warned Alec softly about what was coming. The warning worked better in his head than in spoken words, but he said it out of habit anyway. Alec didn’t so much as blink when the syringe slid into his trembling arm. With eyes half closed, he watched another vial empty into his vein before he asked anything about it.
“How long does it take?”
“Logan said it should take just a couple seconds,” Dean said. “You should be feeling it already.”
“I feel it,” Alec did sound sleepy. “Feels like home.”
“Hang in there, Alec,” Dean rubbed a hand through Alec’s hair. “You hear me?”
Sam could see by Alec’s heightened respiration that he could perceive a lot more about Dean than sight and sound. In fact, Sam thought now was a great time for his brother to back off and let the drugs do their work. He was supremely uninterested in using up what was left of their luck, and Dean’s unawareness of how dangerous Alec had become was making him nervous.
Sam flexed his fists at his sides.
His brother didn’t give him anything but a wary look when Sam pulled him to his feet and hauled him to the other side of the room.
“Sorry it took me so long,” Dean let out a strange laugh. “This stuff was hard to score. Even for Logan.”
Studying his brother’s eyes and the easy stance of his body, Sam could see that Dean wasn’t feeling each and every sensation Alec was broadcasting like Sam was. Sitting in an unventilated room filled with a transgenic pheromone had settled Sam close to some kind of insanity himself. The knowledge that he could find relief with (paid or otherwise) company had ceased to be a strange idea many hours ago. And he was glad he was at least aware that his thought process was being further affected every time he inhaled another lungful of the tainted air.
“Is the kid still dosing you with…“ Dean looked at him sideways. “With whatever crosses his mind?”
“I’m trying not to listen to him,” Sam told him. “It’s not easy but I can do it.”
“What, like some kinda ESP blackout?”
“Hey, did you notice anyone else outside getting it?” Sam frowned. “You know, looking like-”
“Lookin’ for love in all the wrong faces?” Dean shrugged. “No idea. Half the girls on the street up there are workin’ and the rest aren’t even girls.”
“I need to talk to you alone for a second,” Sam looked uneasily over his shoulder. “Upstairs.”
“Why? Are we gonna make out?”
“I mean it,” Sam hadn’t meant to grab Dean’s wrist that hard, the sweat on their skin making it easy for Dean to twist free. “This is serious.”
“Oh yeah, I get that,” Dean turned back to the stairs. “Just wonderin’ if you do.”
“No…” Alec was panting again, harsh and short against the ground. “Don’t go.”
“We’re just going up there for a few,” Dean told him. “We’ll be back before you know it.”
“You think we can’t tell time when you keep us in the dark.” Alec tried to sit up, the belt binding his arms making it impossible to do much else besides roll over. “But we count. I count. I count weeks go by and they still tell me that its just a few days. Then I start screaming and then they add an extra day every time I make a sound--”
“Alec, listen to me,” Dean said steadily. “Listen to the sound of my voice. Do you remember where you are?”
“Want to see what happened when I complained?” Alec asked. “Complaining isn’t like leaving a note in the suggestion box at the office. Complaining is what happens when you raise your voice. Complaining is when you start begging. Do you wanna see?”
“I vote no,” Dean raised his hand. “Sammy does too.”
It was too late. Images of serrated flesh, gaping wounds and burns came as clear as the real thing right before Sam and Dean’s eyes. Then there was the pain afterwards in the dark holding cells where all an X5 could hear was their own shallow breathing. Sometimes one of the less intelligent guards would open the cells and slip inside when no one was monitoring them.
“Jesus, Alec,” Dean had a hand over his mouth. “Stop. Please, stop it.”
“Those guards usually died,” Alec sounded like he was fighting sleep now, the drugs coursing through his blood stream and pulling him under. “Ripped to pieces. Or worse.”
Sam couldn’t see his son’s face in the dark, but he knew when Alec was smiling.
“There’s more,“ Alec slurred. “Want to see what they did to the X5s that tried to escape?”
Dean didn’t even get a chance to politely decline this time. Sam winced and Dean cursed, the next grotesque pictures striking without censor from Alec’s brain and sizzling through the air like a hot knife through butter. Sam pressed the palms of his hands over his eyes until the images quickly reverted from carnage and back to the carnal. Bodies in various states of undress were intertwined, filling the air with whispered promises of release that made Sam‘s face burn red. It had been easier to witness the violence that had befallen the moronic guards than try to blot this stuff out. Trying to stifle the coy voices and grasp of hungry hands, Sam heard his brother voice the same.
“I can’t do this…” Dean had sagged down to the floor. “We-We can’t keep doing this.”
Sam was in full agreement on that one.
He grabbed Dean under the elbow and pulled his arm high enough to make it uncomfortable to walk up the narrow stairs. His brother was in enough of a daze to follow without complaint as they stumbled up to the sweltering first floor of the motel lobby. Sam swallowed back the bitter smell of melting asphalt blowing in sluggishly through a window down the hall. Squinting at the bright yellow sunlight, Sam wondered how long he’d actually been down there sitting by Alec‘s side. He hadn’t quite meant to push his brother that hard up the last few steps, and he really hadn‘t meant to finish the trip by slamming Dean against the wall.
But he hadn’t let go of his brother either.
“I was kiddin’ about the making out part,” Dean tried an uneasy smile. “Let me go, Sam.”
Leaning into the hollow of his neck Sam could really smell him. Under the city dirt, cheap motel soap and everything else, there was just Dean.
“I-I said let go,” Dean tried to yank his arm away but failed. “Logan gave me a contact number and I think we should use it. There might be a chemist livin’ in town that actually built some of the stuff they used on X5s. Are you listening to me?”
Sam liked the waver of fear in his brother’s voice.
“I’m not gonna ask you nice again,” Dean warned him softly. “Lemme go-ah!”
It was far more sensible to subdue with the power Sam housed in his mind rather than using his physical body. The flow of energy he could manipulate to restrain any human being would cost them both nothing but a mild headache. And maybe not even that much anymore. Sam had backed Dean up about as far as he could go in the alcove provided by the window. Glancing out the traffic waning with the peak of the afternoon. Hundreds of people were walking by below on the sidewalk and not a single one of them was looking up.
“Sammy?”
When Dean’s tense weight began to crumple in Sam’s arms, he knew deep down that it was wrong to experience pleasure at seeing the growing panic in his brother’s eyes. Sam knew Dean well, and the last time he’d seen him this lost and confused was on that day back in Blue Earth. That was the day he’d gently reached into Dean’s head and made everything better by taking his memories away. But Sam was planning on taking a lot more than that this time.
And from the look in Dean’s eyes, he knew his brother understood that too.
“There’s nobody here, Dean,” Sam wasn’t sure what he meant by that. No one to hear Dean, or no one to interrupt Sam. Maybe both.
“S-Sammy, you lost it,” Dean‘s thoughts were starting to scatter as Sam forced his brother‘s will to weaken just like his body had. “You and Alec, I dunno, you guys are made of the same stuff, and I think he can make you crazy… L-Listen to me Sam! He can make you think what he thinks… please…. please listen to me…”
“I can make you think things too,” Sam assured him. “Make you see anything I want.”
Dean’s body stiffened in his arms as Sam allowed the assault of sensations to flow unchecked between them. They now could both hear Alec’s thoughts murmuring from the basement. He was telling Sam to take what he wanted. He told him not to stop with Dean but take what he desired from anyone who crossed his path. There was no reason to sit around and think about it either. And these days, Alec calmly reminded him, they didn’t even have to get their hands dirty if they didn’t want to. Men like them could paralyze and use someone all up without even looking their victim once in the eye…
Dean was on his knees, struggling to stay upright when Sam was doing his best to force him down into perfect compliancy. Sam’s head was starting to throb with the onslaught and it occurred to him somewhere in the back of his mind what it might feel like to someone like Dean who never had done anything like it before. Studying Dean’s frantic eyes, he listened to him make a strange choking sound that Sam might have said was crying if it wasn’t coming from his own brother.
Sam wiped at something wet on his upper lip and realized his nose was bleeding.
“This isn’t you, Sammy,” Dean gasped. “This isn’t you. This isn‘t you. This isn‘t you-”
Sam stopped the prayer by sliding a hand over Dean’s mouth. He was so distracted by what he was about to do next that he didn’t even hear the front door until the screen door banged against the wall. It swung on its rusty hinges and stayed there, propped open by the woman who had kicked it open.
He knew the transgenic immediately even if the last time he’d seen her face it had been almost unrecognizable with bruises.
Max.
“What are you doing here?” he asked. “You should leave.”
With a half smile, she cupped a fist and cracked her knuckles.
“Don’t worry,” she grinned. “House calls always cost extra.”
tbc