fic: Ensnared (Sam/Dean, NC-17) Chapter 2 of 4
Back to Chapter 1
****
It was a long walk back to his car, every step he took seemed to drive the spikes a bit deeper into his skull where they could rattle together. This hangover or whatever it was seemed to be getting worse. That meant it took Dean a lot longer than he’d planned to get the car out of the ditch.
As in-it overlapped with Sam’s afternoon run.
He paused when Sam’s shadow darkened the sky behind him. He looked up at his brother who was outlined with pulsating sun rays. It was too much to take in along with the hangover.
“Need some help?” Sam asked, stepping down into the ditch behind the car.
“Yeah, stay there and push,” Dean said, climbing into the driver’s seat. He started up the engine and gunned it carefully up and out of the ditch. Sam only got partially slimed by the mud kicked up by the tires. Instead of laughing, Dean dug up a mostly clean towel and handed it to Sam.
“I know I’ve asked you this before, but you’ve got to promise me you won’t drive drunk again,” Sam said. “If you got killed doing that, I’d never forgive you. And if you hurt anyone, you’d never forgive yourself. Promise me, Dean,” Sam said in his best demanding little brother voice.
It felt like he’d had to endure Sam’s lecture for the millionth time over the years and maybe that was enough. It would be a pretty stupid way to go out, and Sam was right about the ‘not forgiving himself if he hurt someone part’. It wasn’t worth it anymore to pretend to be heedless and carefree. “Yeah, okay, I promise.”
Sam gave him a look that managed to be both relieved and skeptical in equal measures and then almost toppled over into the ditch. Dean caught his arm up just in time but then nearly pitched over himself. Their feet were ensnared by vines at the edge of the ditch. As he kicked them off, he thought about that horrible dream and the thorny vines. And all those thorns he’d picked out of his palms that morning. But these vines, they were completely thornless. Just smooth stems, wrapping around their ankles.
That night he had the same intense dream again, but this time Sam was the only one being choked by the vines, while Benny fed from him, not letting him up to go save Sam. In the dream his main frustration was that he couldn’t taste Sam’s blood again. Benny wouldn’t let him. That he wasn’t saving Sam from the vines didn’t really matter.
The next morning, after picking still more new thorns out of his palms he began researching. Late into the afternoon, he researched dream meanings and symbolism, looking up vines and thorns and vampire bites and desire for blood but he couldn’t put anything useful together. He could tell Sam was about to start noticing all his researching and so he knew he had to call it quits for the day.
“I’m going to the store and get us something good to make for dinner,” Dean said, standing in Sam’s doorway.
“Want some company?” Sam asked, looking up from the middle of the enormous novel it seemed like he’d been reading for days.
“Nah, I’ve got it, you keep reading, Poindexter.”
Once he got the shopping done, he stopped in at the bar again to see if the same bartender was there.
“I’ll take a whisky, single neat,” Dean said, settling down on the same barstool as last time.
“Hey, Dean, how did it go? You start talking yet or did he already kick your ass out?” Shirl asked sliding the glass over after she’d poured.
“I wanted to take your advice, Shirl, I really did. But I keep having this bad dream and I think it’s telling me not to do it. I don’t know, I’ve gone so long without telling him everything, isn’t it too late by now to come clean? I just wanted to make him a nice dinner tonight.”
Shirl sighed and came around the bar, sitting on the stool next to Dean since there were no other customers at the moment. She poured him another measure of whisky. “Listen, how long have you two been together?”
“Seems like our whole lives practically, but about twelve years give or take a millennia,” Dean said, which was pretty damn truthful even though Shirl probably thought he was just waxing poetic.
“A millennia, huh? Well, if he’s been worth sticking around for that long, I’m pretty sure he’s worth having a hard conversation with once in a while, right?”
Dean sighed, knowing how right she was. “How far back do I need to go?”
“When you think of the worst thing he doesn’t know, how far back is it?” Shirl asked.
“About twelve years,” Dean said, pit forming in his stomach.
“Start there and see how it goes. If you were him, would you want to know? If you’ve based the whole thing on a lie, does it all really matter to you or not?”
“That’s kinda harsh,” Dean said, finishing off his whisky.
“Well, that’s what they pay me the big bucks for. I’m cuttin’ you off at two for tonight. Go home and cook your man his dinner, and then hit him with the good talky stuff for dessert. I don’t want to see your face back in here until you’ve done it.”
Dean stood up and mock-saluted, tossed a twenty on the bar and smiled. “Thanks, Shirl, see you maybe never.”
***
That night, after his home-made lasagna was done and dusted, he sat Sam down with a glass of whisky in their pair of comfy library chairs. Sam looked at him with that worried/curious almost-frown that hadn’t changed from childhood.
“What’s up?” Sam asked. “You’ve been acting weird all night.”
“I’ve got to tell you something, Sammy. And I’m pretty sure you won’t like it. I should have told you all the way back when it happened, and I’m sorry it took me this long. I had my reasons, which you probably won’t agree with.”
"Dean, just say it,” Sam said, turning to him with that open, earnest face he used during victim interviews. He could see Sam struggling to keep all the worry turned down.
Dean downed the rest of his whisky and poured himself a refill. He settled back into the chair and took a deep breath. “When I came and got you at Stanford, it wasn’t just because I couldn’t find Dad. It was more…uh, about you, I guess. I had a bad feeling that something was going to happen to you that weekend.”
Sam didn’t say anything for a few extra long moments. “You mean you had a premonition?”
“I guess so, yeah. I saw you dying in a fire, trapped and yelling out for me. And if I’d told you back then, maybe we could have done something differently, so Jess would still be alive. I had another one that night, that told me you were in trouble, it’s why I showed up and pulled you out of the fire.”
Sam visibly winced when he said Jess’ name. “I had never asked you why you were there in our apartment after you’d dropped me off. Never really had thought about it. Have you ever had other premonitions since then?”
“None that stand out like those two. I mostly just chalk it up to lucky guesses or trusting my gut because of my vast experience.”
Sam rolled his eyes at Dean’s boasting. “I can see why you didn't tell me back then. But why didn’t you bring it up when I started getting the death visions?”
“I was still too guilty about not saying anything about it when it would have helped. But it was mostly because I didn’t want you to leave me. We’d just…you know, gotten together. Plus to me, they seemed like two different things.”
“Probably were, but it would have been helpful to know I wasn’t such a freak back then,” Sam said with a sigh.
“You’ve always been a freak, Sammy, pretty sure I told you that,” Dean said, grinning.
Sam punched at his arm and eventually smiled back. "Was that all you wanted to tell me?”
“Is that all? Sam, the whole thing between us is based on something I lied to you about, doesn’t that bother you?”
“No, no it doesn’t. Because that’s not what we’re based on, Dean. No way,” Sam said shaking his head.
“Well then, what the hell are we based on? Doesn’t it bug you that I lied to you about something so important from the very beginning?”
“Yeah, of course it bugs me, but don’t tell me that’s all there is, because I won’t believe you, because you’d be fucking wrong,” Sam said.
“There’s more that you don’t know…that I haven’t told you. Not a huge surprise I’m sure,” Dean said, refilling his glass and drinking half of it down. “I mean, I’ve got a list of stuff I should tell you that I haven’t. But I can’t do it all at once, and you probably wouldn’t want to hear half of it anyway,”
Sam said nothing, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms over his chest with his patented I’m-prepared-to-be-underwhelmed face.
Dean thought about Shirl’s advice and warnings and decided to surprise his brother this time. Because why the hell not? Got to keep him on his toes and all right?
“I’m going to start with telling you what happened with Baby just the other night. It started when I realized what you’d been reading on the way home from the Brit’s trailer the other day. All the detailed stuff about Benny and…uh how we got outta Purgatory. Knowing that you knew all of it-I got kind of messed up relieving it all, it brought up some stuff I haven’t dealt with yet.”
“What kind of stuff?” Sam asked, uncrossing his arms and switching over to the empathetic listening face that he only ever used on Dean when he knew it was something big.
“The way things were between me and Benny, while we were there, I never told you about-“ Dean said, frowning when Sam interrupted him.
“I figured you had some kind of relationship with him Dean, I don’t need the details. It was a whole year, I’m not that naive,” Sam said.
“I know you’re not, Sammy, believe me I know. But you don’t know that I still dream about him-about being with him.”
Sam didn’t speak for a long moment, his eyes got a faraway look and he smiled a little crookedly. “I still dream about Amelia like that sometimes, but it’s always random subconscious kind of stuff. It sure as shit doesn’t mean I want to go back to her or leave you or anything crazy like that.”
“Oh-good, I guess, that we both do that,” Dean said stumbling over his words, as the horrible confirmation that he was right about Sam making the wrong choice to leave Amelia hit him hard.
“What do you think it means that you dream about him?” Sam asked, interrupting Dean’s spiral into unhelpful conclusions.
“Well, until the other night, I’d have said the same thing as you just did, I think. They were a part of our lives, for a year, like you said, right? That’s a lot of time in the scheme of things. But after the thing with Baby the other night, the dreams I’m having aren’t normal.”
“Not normal how? Like a premonition again?” Sam asked.
“No, not like that, but they’re not regular dreams where random shit happens and you wake up and say to yourself: ‘wow that was a weird-ass dream’. It feels like it’s being directed from somewhere or something.”
“So what was it that happened with Baby?” Sam asked.
“I drove back from the bar, guess I had one too many glasses of whisky,” Dean said holding up a hand in the stop signal, “which I already promised you never to do again.”
“Thank you,” Sam said with a nod.
“I guess I fell asleep at the wheel or something, about a mile down the road from home. Ended up out of the car in the ditch where you found me trying to get her out. That night though, when I woke up down in that ditch, I was tangled up in all those vines, remember the ones that wrapped around our ankles when you were helping me? I got them off eventually and walked home. And ever since then I’ve been dreaming about vines and thorns and Benny and you and me.”
Sam put on his working-it-all-out-face and leaned forward. “Describe the dreams as best as you can. Like it’s for a case or something, okay?”
“You already know what this is, don’t you?” Dean asked, raising an eyebrow at Sam for making him go through the motions of a case instead of just spitting it out.
“I have a couple of hypotheses, yes, just like you probably do. But I need the details of the dreams to narrow it down.”
“Okay, fine, there are vines like I said, and they’re sentient and in constant motion. They’re all I can hear and everything I can sense is made up of them and the noises they make, their foul rotting smell,” Dean shuddered. “It’s creepy, and they’re growing around Benny and then you, you guys are trying to talk to me and then they grow out of your mouths and start choking you. I pull them off Benny, and then he…uh, he feeds off of me.”
“You mean he’s drinking your blood?” Sam asked, but not asking whether this was a thing that happened in Purgatory or afterwards.
“Yeah, then I hear you, and push him off, and you already have his bite mark on your neck. I lick up the blood from your neck, not like I’m a vamp myself, but just because I want it, I need to have it, to taste it. I ask you ‘why’d you let him, Sammy.’ That’s when you woke me up.”
“Anything else?” Sam asked.
“The next night it was almost the same, but this time you were the only one getting choked, and Benny wouldn’t let me up while he was feeding on me. He wouldn’t let me taste you no matter how much I begged. The vines seemed happy or something.”
“That’s pretty messed up,” Sam said.
“Shirl said it was just my subconscious working my guilt out about still dreaming about Benny. And at first I believed her, but then there were the thorns. When I woke up in my bed after the first dream, my hands were covered in thorns. I thought it was from where I’d left the Impala, but when I went back to get her, there were lots of vines but they didn’t have any thorns, none at all. And there were no vines with thorns in any of the ditches between that spot and home.”
“Shirl?” Sam asked, sitting up a little straighter in his chair.
“Oh-she’s the bartender, at Larry’s down on the main street, just past the grocery,” Dean answered, suddenly feeling strange about knowing the bartender well enough to know her name.
"Were the thorns in your palms when you woke up the same ones from the vines in your dream?”
“Not really, they were much smaller, when I was pulling the vines off of you and Benny in the dream, the thorns were enormous, they were cutting me up and were slippery with my blood. That was the only place in the dream that they cut me, but they didn’t stick in my palms like the ones that were there when I woke up.”
“But you didn’t have blood on your hands when you woke up, just small thorns?” Sam asked, leaning forward to peer at Dean’s hands.
Dean spread his hands out palms up to show his brother. “Uh huh, no blood at all, and there were leaves and stuff from the ground on my jacket. So I was definitely on the ground at some point that night, I didn’t dream that part.”
“I’m going to have to check this out, but I’m pretty sure it’s some kind of dream-demon or spirit. We’ll get it handled, don’t worry,” Sam said.
“I already did some research on vines and vamps and blood drinking and dreams. Nothing really came together for me though.”
“Show me?” Sam asked, standing up and holding a hand out to Dean.
Dean took his hand and stood up into Sam’s arms, who instantly wrapped him up in an unescapable hug. For once he didn’t want to escape, he buried his face in Sam’s shirt, soaking up the forgiveness even though he knew he didn’t deserve it.
“Thanks for telling me, Dean. I knew something was wrong, and that it was probably about the Benny stuff, but I was trying to give you space.”
“I’m sorry, for still dreaming about him sometimes,” Dean mumbled into Sam’s chest.
“It’s not something you need to apologize for, Dean, really,” Sam said into his hair.
Dean felt everything well up inside of him, all of the things he’d been hiding were piled up so high. “It feels like cheating, which makes it even worse that you’re not living a happy ending kind of life with her like you should be.”
“Dean, that’s not-how can you even think that? After all these years, how can you still not get it?” Sam asked, holding Dean even tighter like he knew Dean would want to run.
Dean sagged against Sam, dreading what would come next, letting Sam hold him up before he destroyed him.
Sam pulled them apart a little and put one of his giant hands under Dean’s chin until he looked up. “I chose you, and I will always choose you. As far as I’m concerned this, right here, right now, is the happy ending we’re making for ourselves,” Sam said, the earnestness in his expression and voice, the love and forgiveness in his eyes made Dean’s heart soar with surprised joy.
Dean kissed Sam then, hoping the thankfulness he felt would be communicated. Judging by the passion of Sam’s returned kiss, the message had gotten through just fine. This man, that he held in his arms, who held him so tightly, Sam had chosen him. And even better, he was happy, Sam had just said this was their happy ending. Dean felt himself fall apart, shaking with relief as his brother held him up through it.
Before he realized what was happening, Sam had hoisted him up onto one of the library tables and was undoing his jeans while pushing his shirt out of the way. Sam’s hair tickled at his bare belly as Dean felt himself harden completely. The feeling of Sam’s rough cheek sliding against him made him moan. Sam took him into his mouth and then down his throat, lips moving around him with words that Dean couldn’t quite hear but somehow knew. The vibration from Sam’s speaking the thankful prayers they still couldn’t say to each other was enough to tip Dean over the edge. He clenched his hands in Sam’s hair, pulling and tugging as he came hard and sudden.
****
Chapter 3
****
It was a long walk back to his car, every step he took seemed to drive the spikes a bit deeper into his skull where they could rattle together. This hangover or whatever it was seemed to be getting worse. That meant it took Dean a lot longer than he’d planned to get the car out of the ditch.
As in-it overlapped with Sam’s afternoon run.
He paused when Sam’s shadow darkened the sky behind him. He looked up at his brother who was outlined with pulsating sun rays. It was too much to take in along with the hangover.
“Need some help?” Sam asked, stepping down into the ditch behind the car.
“Yeah, stay there and push,” Dean said, climbing into the driver’s seat. He started up the engine and gunned it carefully up and out of the ditch. Sam only got partially slimed by the mud kicked up by the tires. Instead of laughing, Dean dug up a mostly clean towel and handed it to Sam.
“I know I’ve asked you this before, but you’ve got to promise me you won’t drive drunk again,” Sam said. “If you got killed doing that, I’d never forgive you. And if you hurt anyone, you’d never forgive yourself. Promise me, Dean,” Sam said in his best demanding little brother voice.
It felt like he’d had to endure Sam’s lecture for the millionth time over the years and maybe that was enough. It would be a pretty stupid way to go out, and Sam was right about the ‘not forgiving himself if he hurt someone part’. It wasn’t worth it anymore to pretend to be heedless and carefree. “Yeah, okay, I promise.”
Sam gave him a look that managed to be both relieved and skeptical in equal measures and then almost toppled over into the ditch. Dean caught his arm up just in time but then nearly pitched over himself. Their feet were ensnared by vines at the edge of the ditch. As he kicked them off, he thought about that horrible dream and the thorny vines. And all those thorns he’d picked out of his palms that morning. But these vines, they were completely thornless. Just smooth stems, wrapping around their ankles.
That night he had the same intense dream again, but this time Sam was the only one being choked by the vines, while Benny fed from him, not letting him up to go save Sam. In the dream his main frustration was that he couldn’t taste Sam’s blood again. Benny wouldn’t let him. That he wasn’t saving Sam from the vines didn’t really matter.
The next morning, after picking still more new thorns out of his palms he began researching. Late into the afternoon, he researched dream meanings and symbolism, looking up vines and thorns and vampire bites and desire for blood but he couldn’t put anything useful together. He could tell Sam was about to start noticing all his researching and so he knew he had to call it quits for the day.
“I’m going to the store and get us something good to make for dinner,” Dean said, standing in Sam’s doorway.
“Want some company?” Sam asked, looking up from the middle of the enormous novel it seemed like he’d been reading for days.
“Nah, I’ve got it, you keep reading, Poindexter.”
Once he got the shopping done, he stopped in at the bar again to see if the same bartender was there.
“I’ll take a whisky, single neat,” Dean said, settling down on the same barstool as last time.
“Hey, Dean, how did it go? You start talking yet or did he already kick your ass out?” Shirl asked sliding the glass over after she’d poured.
“I wanted to take your advice, Shirl, I really did. But I keep having this bad dream and I think it’s telling me not to do it. I don’t know, I’ve gone so long without telling him everything, isn’t it too late by now to come clean? I just wanted to make him a nice dinner tonight.”
Shirl sighed and came around the bar, sitting on the stool next to Dean since there were no other customers at the moment. She poured him another measure of whisky. “Listen, how long have you two been together?”
“Seems like our whole lives practically, but about twelve years give or take a millennia,” Dean said, which was pretty damn truthful even though Shirl probably thought he was just waxing poetic.
“A millennia, huh? Well, if he’s been worth sticking around for that long, I’m pretty sure he’s worth having a hard conversation with once in a while, right?”
Dean sighed, knowing how right she was. “How far back do I need to go?”
“When you think of the worst thing he doesn’t know, how far back is it?” Shirl asked.
“About twelve years,” Dean said, pit forming in his stomach.
“Start there and see how it goes. If you were him, would you want to know? If you’ve based the whole thing on a lie, does it all really matter to you or not?”
“That’s kinda harsh,” Dean said, finishing off his whisky.
“Well, that’s what they pay me the big bucks for. I’m cuttin’ you off at two for tonight. Go home and cook your man his dinner, and then hit him with the good talky stuff for dessert. I don’t want to see your face back in here until you’ve done it.”
Dean stood up and mock-saluted, tossed a twenty on the bar and smiled. “Thanks, Shirl, see you maybe never.”
***
That night, after his home-made lasagna was done and dusted, he sat Sam down with a glass of whisky in their pair of comfy library chairs. Sam looked at him with that worried/curious almost-frown that hadn’t changed from childhood.
“What’s up?” Sam asked. “You’ve been acting weird all night.”
“I’ve got to tell you something, Sammy. And I’m pretty sure you won’t like it. I should have told you all the way back when it happened, and I’m sorry it took me this long. I had my reasons, which you probably won’t agree with.”
"Dean, just say it,” Sam said, turning to him with that open, earnest face he used during victim interviews. He could see Sam struggling to keep all the worry turned down.
Dean downed the rest of his whisky and poured himself a refill. He settled back into the chair and took a deep breath. “When I came and got you at Stanford, it wasn’t just because I couldn’t find Dad. It was more…uh, about you, I guess. I had a bad feeling that something was going to happen to you that weekend.”
Sam didn’t say anything for a few extra long moments. “You mean you had a premonition?”
“I guess so, yeah. I saw you dying in a fire, trapped and yelling out for me. And if I’d told you back then, maybe we could have done something differently, so Jess would still be alive. I had another one that night, that told me you were in trouble, it’s why I showed up and pulled you out of the fire.”
Sam visibly winced when he said Jess’ name. “I had never asked you why you were there in our apartment after you’d dropped me off. Never really had thought about it. Have you ever had other premonitions since then?”
“None that stand out like those two. I mostly just chalk it up to lucky guesses or trusting my gut because of my vast experience.”
Sam rolled his eyes at Dean’s boasting. “I can see why you didn't tell me back then. But why didn’t you bring it up when I started getting the death visions?”
“I was still too guilty about not saying anything about it when it would have helped. But it was mostly because I didn’t want you to leave me. We’d just…you know, gotten together. Plus to me, they seemed like two different things.”
“Probably were, but it would have been helpful to know I wasn’t such a freak back then,” Sam said with a sigh.
“You’ve always been a freak, Sammy, pretty sure I told you that,” Dean said, grinning.
Sam punched at his arm and eventually smiled back. "Was that all you wanted to tell me?”
“Is that all? Sam, the whole thing between us is based on something I lied to you about, doesn’t that bother you?”
“No, no it doesn’t. Because that’s not what we’re based on, Dean. No way,” Sam said shaking his head.
“Well then, what the hell are we based on? Doesn’t it bug you that I lied to you about something so important from the very beginning?”
“Yeah, of course it bugs me, but don’t tell me that’s all there is, because I won’t believe you, because you’d be fucking wrong,” Sam said.
“There’s more that you don’t know…that I haven’t told you. Not a huge surprise I’m sure,” Dean said, refilling his glass and drinking half of it down. “I mean, I’ve got a list of stuff I should tell you that I haven’t. But I can’t do it all at once, and you probably wouldn’t want to hear half of it anyway,”
Sam said nothing, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms over his chest with his patented I’m-prepared-to-be-underwhelmed face.
Dean thought about Shirl’s advice and warnings and decided to surprise his brother this time. Because why the hell not? Got to keep him on his toes and all right?
“I’m going to start with telling you what happened with Baby just the other night. It started when I realized what you’d been reading on the way home from the Brit’s trailer the other day. All the detailed stuff about Benny and…uh how we got outta Purgatory. Knowing that you knew all of it-I got kind of messed up relieving it all, it brought up some stuff I haven’t dealt with yet.”
“What kind of stuff?” Sam asked, uncrossing his arms and switching over to the empathetic listening face that he only ever used on Dean when he knew it was something big.
“The way things were between me and Benny, while we were there, I never told you about-“ Dean said, frowning when Sam interrupted him.
“I figured you had some kind of relationship with him Dean, I don’t need the details. It was a whole year, I’m not that naive,” Sam said.
“I know you’re not, Sammy, believe me I know. But you don’t know that I still dream about him-about being with him.”
Sam didn’t speak for a long moment, his eyes got a faraway look and he smiled a little crookedly. “I still dream about Amelia like that sometimes, but it’s always random subconscious kind of stuff. It sure as shit doesn’t mean I want to go back to her or leave you or anything crazy like that.”
“Oh-good, I guess, that we both do that,” Dean said stumbling over his words, as the horrible confirmation that he was right about Sam making the wrong choice to leave Amelia hit him hard.
“What do you think it means that you dream about him?” Sam asked, interrupting Dean’s spiral into unhelpful conclusions.
“Well, until the other night, I’d have said the same thing as you just did, I think. They were a part of our lives, for a year, like you said, right? That’s a lot of time in the scheme of things. But after the thing with Baby the other night, the dreams I’m having aren’t normal.”
“Not normal how? Like a premonition again?” Sam asked.
“No, not like that, but they’re not regular dreams where random shit happens and you wake up and say to yourself: ‘wow that was a weird-ass dream’. It feels like it’s being directed from somewhere or something.”
“So what was it that happened with Baby?” Sam asked.
“I drove back from the bar, guess I had one too many glasses of whisky,” Dean said holding up a hand in the stop signal, “which I already promised you never to do again.”
“Thank you,” Sam said with a nod.
“I guess I fell asleep at the wheel or something, about a mile down the road from home. Ended up out of the car in the ditch where you found me trying to get her out. That night though, when I woke up down in that ditch, I was tangled up in all those vines, remember the ones that wrapped around our ankles when you were helping me? I got them off eventually and walked home. And ever since then I’ve been dreaming about vines and thorns and Benny and you and me.”
Sam put on his working-it-all-out-face and leaned forward. “Describe the dreams as best as you can. Like it’s for a case or something, okay?”
“You already know what this is, don’t you?” Dean asked, raising an eyebrow at Sam for making him go through the motions of a case instead of just spitting it out.
“I have a couple of hypotheses, yes, just like you probably do. But I need the details of the dreams to narrow it down.”
“Okay, fine, there are vines like I said, and they’re sentient and in constant motion. They’re all I can hear and everything I can sense is made up of them and the noises they make, their foul rotting smell,” Dean shuddered. “It’s creepy, and they’re growing around Benny and then you, you guys are trying to talk to me and then they grow out of your mouths and start choking you. I pull them off Benny, and then he…uh, he feeds off of me.”
“You mean he’s drinking your blood?” Sam asked, but not asking whether this was a thing that happened in Purgatory or afterwards.
“Yeah, then I hear you, and push him off, and you already have his bite mark on your neck. I lick up the blood from your neck, not like I’m a vamp myself, but just because I want it, I need to have it, to taste it. I ask you ‘why’d you let him, Sammy.’ That’s when you woke me up.”
“Anything else?” Sam asked.
“The next night it was almost the same, but this time you were the only one getting choked, and Benny wouldn’t let me up while he was feeding on me. He wouldn’t let me taste you no matter how much I begged. The vines seemed happy or something.”
“That’s pretty messed up,” Sam said.
“Shirl said it was just my subconscious working my guilt out about still dreaming about Benny. And at first I believed her, but then there were the thorns. When I woke up in my bed after the first dream, my hands were covered in thorns. I thought it was from where I’d left the Impala, but when I went back to get her, there were lots of vines but they didn’t have any thorns, none at all. And there were no vines with thorns in any of the ditches between that spot and home.”
“Shirl?” Sam asked, sitting up a little straighter in his chair.
“Oh-she’s the bartender, at Larry’s down on the main street, just past the grocery,” Dean answered, suddenly feeling strange about knowing the bartender well enough to know her name.
"Were the thorns in your palms when you woke up the same ones from the vines in your dream?”
“Not really, they were much smaller, when I was pulling the vines off of you and Benny in the dream, the thorns were enormous, they were cutting me up and were slippery with my blood. That was the only place in the dream that they cut me, but they didn’t stick in my palms like the ones that were there when I woke up.”
“But you didn’t have blood on your hands when you woke up, just small thorns?” Sam asked, leaning forward to peer at Dean’s hands.
Dean spread his hands out palms up to show his brother. “Uh huh, no blood at all, and there were leaves and stuff from the ground on my jacket. So I was definitely on the ground at some point that night, I didn’t dream that part.”
“I’m going to have to check this out, but I’m pretty sure it’s some kind of dream-demon or spirit. We’ll get it handled, don’t worry,” Sam said.
“I already did some research on vines and vamps and blood drinking and dreams. Nothing really came together for me though.”
“Show me?” Sam asked, standing up and holding a hand out to Dean.
Dean took his hand and stood up into Sam’s arms, who instantly wrapped him up in an unescapable hug. For once he didn’t want to escape, he buried his face in Sam’s shirt, soaking up the forgiveness even though he knew he didn’t deserve it.
“Thanks for telling me, Dean. I knew something was wrong, and that it was probably about the Benny stuff, but I was trying to give you space.”
“I’m sorry, for still dreaming about him sometimes,” Dean mumbled into Sam’s chest.
“It’s not something you need to apologize for, Dean, really,” Sam said into his hair.
Dean felt everything well up inside of him, all of the things he’d been hiding were piled up so high. “It feels like cheating, which makes it even worse that you’re not living a happy ending kind of life with her like you should be.”
“Dean, that’s not-how can you even think that? After all these years, how can you still not get it?” Sam asked, holding Dean even tighter like he knew Dean would want to run.
Dean sagged against Sam, dreading what would come next, letting Sam hold him up before he destroyed him.
Sam pulled them apart a little and put one of his giant hands under Dean’s chin until he looked up. “I chose you, and I will always choose you. As far as I’m concerned this, right here, right now, is the happy ending we’re making for ourselves,” Sam said, the earnestness in his expression and voice, the love and forgiveness in his eyes made Dean’s heart soar with surprised joy.
Dean kissed Sam then, hoping the thankfulness he felt would be communicated. Judging by the passion of Sam’s returned kiss, the message had gotten through just fine. This man, that he held in his arms, who held him so tightly, Sam had chosen him. And even better, he was happy, Sam had just said this was their happy ending. Dean felt himself fall apart, shaking with relief as his brother held him up through it.
Before he realized what was happening, Sam had hoisted him up onto one of the library tables and was undoing his jeans while pushing his shirt out of the way. Sam’s hair tickled at his bare belly as Dean felt himself harden completely. The feeling of Sam’s rough cheek sliding against him made him moan. Sam took him into his mouth and then down his throat, lips moving around him with words that Dean couldn’t quite hear but somehow knew. The vibration from Sam’s speaking the thankful prayers they still couldn’t say to each other was enough to tip Dean over the edge. He clenched his hands in Sam’s hair, pulling and tugging as he came hard and sudden.
****
Chapter 3