What's Done in the Dark
Title: What's Done in the Dark
Rating: Hard PG-13.
Words: ~3,500
Spoilers: None really, completely AU.
Warnings: Violence, language, child abuse, reasonably minor gore, briefly hinted-at sexual abuse, psychological issues, general misery, very very terrible father!John, psychotic!Sam, broken!lost!Dean. Not a happy story.
Summary: John Winchester's sons are on a mission from God. This is set in some indeterminable time after John's death, but if the cops are onto the Winchesters Dean doesn't know it. Written for the eternally fabulous prufrock_26, who wanted PTSD!murdering!John, psychotic murder!Sam, and a Dean who still thought that his family killed demons. This could also theoretically be a prequel to part two of " Variations on a Theme."
Neurotic author's notes: Title and cut text both from Johnny Cash's "God's Gonna Cut You Down." I wrote the bulk of this on the train and I'm not 100% pleased with this fic, as I wanted Dean's mental process to be a little more disjointed and Sam's manipulation a little clearer, but whatever, I got good news from the doctor today (this! is! so! rare! I'm! over! the! fucking! moon!!) and I wanted to post fic. Bruce, my love, I hope you like it. :)
“God, do I love a fucked-up boy.”
Her name is Mallory and she’s talking right into his ear, purring like a kitty, because sometime between take me home, handsome and what can I say, you seem like a good boy, all teasing, all teeth, he’d choked out a no ma’am, he was laughing, but it was true, the truest thing he knew, I’m a fuck up.
She didn’t believe him then, he thinks, but she believes him now, pulling off his shirt and pants and finding all those marks, marks Dad put there and bad (evil dark horrible nasty demon) people (not people never people Dean) put there and marks he put there, once or twice, the odd stunted scar from when Sammy gets mad, and now she believes him. She doesn’t know the dirt under his nails is from the local pastor’s wife, whose pretty hair he’d smoothed down after they cut her throat and Sam had laughed and said “You’re suck a fuck-up, Dean.”
She doesn’t know that but she does believe him when he says he’s a fuck-up and she’s closing her mouth over his anyways, pressure, hands around his neck, in his hair, trailing down to his torso and something hot and wonderful is building in his belly and his groin and he’s good at this, lots of people have said so, he knows.
Dean likes women. Likes them a lot. They’re easy. They’re safe. When Dean was small sometimes women from schools and neighborhoods would cluck their tongues and run their hands through his hair or Sammy’s and thumb over the marks on his arms or face and say “Sweetheart, are you okay?” and that was sort of nice because mostly Dean doesn’t like being touched but when it’s a girl and her face is all soft and sorry it’s nice. It’s nice.
Girls are easier for other reasons. He’s stronger than they are. He’s bigger than most. He can hold them down. Sometimes when they’re done struggling because they’ve bled the evil out their necks or their stomachs or else they’re unconscious, Sam will smile like he’s got a secret and reach down between their legs. He says Dean can, too, and sometimes Dean does, sometimes he runs a cautionary hand over their breasts and feels the softness there, but it always feels like he’s cheating, like he’s taking something he hasn’t earned, so he usually leaves that to Sam, who calls him a fuck-up.
“Sammy, every girl you sleep with turns out to be evil,” says Dean one day in the car, and Sam’s face splits into a hundred-watt grin and he laughs fondly and says “Oh, Dean,” and Dean doesn’t really get why that’s funny but Sammy smiles are like diamonds in the dust so who’s he to complain?
Dean looks like a girl, Dad used to say sometimes, looks like Mary, and something in the way Dad used to say it when he was drunk and prone to collapsing on top of Dean and being too handsy, too affectionate, it didn’t feel right and made Dean queasy but if there’s one thing Dean knows it’s that Dad was always right and you can’t mention Mom or Mary so shut up, Dean, shut the fuck up. Real girls at least are gentle, so Dean doesn’t mind so much.
Dean likes girls because they’re soft and sweet and he can sort of remember, when he tries, his mom, singing and touching gently and things were different then, softer, lighter, he can’t remember where Dad was, then, or where the demons were, just Mom and the soft way she laughed like Christmas bells, and Dean is not supposed to talk about Mom, never ever shut up don’t even say her fucking name, so he doesn’t, much, but the best part of the night he spends with Mallory isn’t the sex, it’s after when he falls down onto his stomach and she curls up next to him with her arm slung over his waist around his back close and comforting and she wakes up before him but it’s okay because Sam is gonna be wondering where he is.
Dinner that night is burgers, and fries and a milkshake and Sam says Dean eats like a pig but fuck Sam, he’s never been really hungry, Dean was sure of that (because Sammy needs to eat Dean Jesus fucking Christ are those his ribs what the fuck is wrong with you). Dean knows he ain’t worth much but he did a good job today (devils all around Dean-o and they all gotta die every one dead is a good day) and he can have a fucking milkshake if he wants.
“They way you eat sometimes,” says Sam, kind of fondly, and then Dean dips his French fry in his milkshake and Sam makes a little angry-cat sound and says, “I swear, you’re gonna make me sick,” and Dean wants to point out that there’s something funny because Sam gets sick at a fried potato soaked in melted ice cream but not at that pastor’s wife with her neck raggedly cut open and the demon bleeding into the nice carpet and Dean’s hand smoothing back her hair while Sam breaks her crucifix with his giant bloody hand and Dean has seen that hand break so many things, necks and bottles and once a whole bird when Sam was just a small thing, out in the yard and Dean yelled for Dad and got in trouble for crying, and now he’s breaking a crucifix and then he holds its jagged end up and smirks between Dean and the lady and says “Remember The Exorcist?” and then Dean is patting her hair and Sam says he’s a fuck-up, and all that Sam can stomach but Dean dips his French fry in the milkshake and suddenly Sam’s gonna be sick, that’s hilarious, it is, but Dean knows better than to Ever Talk About the Job, so he smirks and keeps eating.
Sammy didn’t get sick much as a baby, French fry dipping aside, because Dean took good care of him, real good care, always, fed him and brushed his wild hair and when he got real mad and red in the face and screamed Dean would sit in the corner and rock him until he stopped thrashing, and when Dad once bashed Sam’s head against the table while they were having dinner Dean plugged up his bleeding nose and carried him to bed because he was still so small and when he slept for two days Dean didn’t panic just pet his hair and sang to him and cleaned up the bed where he peed and hid the wet sheets from Dad who found them anyways and kicked Dean right in the ribs which Dean deserved because Sammy was still asleep and Dad asked him what kind of pussy he was, anyways, crying like that, and Dean didn’t know who Dad was mad at so he sat on the bed with Sammy and when his brother woke up and threw up into his lap he didn’t even get mad, didn’t even hit Sam because he’d been asleep for so long and didn’t know any better.
Can’t have pussies for sons, Dad said, because there’s so much evil out there, you gotta be strong, stronger, Dean, stronger, when Dean ran and ran until his chest felt like something torn open and flapping in the wind and that night Dad took him to a graveyard and they lit a grave on fire and Dean helped with the digging and lit the body himself and Dad touched his head and said that’s what I’m talking about and Dean thought maybe it wasn’t so bad, being Dean Winchester.
Being Dean Winchester wasn’t so bad when there was Sammy alive and well and not screaming and not kicking and just smiling because his brother was there.
“What are you grinning about?” Sam asks, peering at Dean over the milkshake.
“You,” says Dean.
“Freak,” says Sam, like I love you.
Something was the matter with Sam. Dad had been telling him for years and years, that was why he was so stubborn, why he kicked and screamed and cried and thrashed and threw tantrums with his whole body, why Mom died from the fire in his nursery, why their luck was so nasty. Maybe, Dean supposed, maybe it was why every girl Sam ever fucked needed to die. Something’s wrong with Sam, Dad said, we might have to kill him, and that scared Dean more than anything so he decided to make Sammy the best demon killer in the whole wide world, better than him or Dad or anybody, and then it wouldn’t matter, than Sam wouldn’t have to die, because when everything else was rushing in his ears and coming to pieces and falling apart there was still Sam, his wide sweet face and his little moles and his soft hair and even when he laughed at Dean or hit him he still needed him, still said he was sorry after, so sorry, so sorry Dean, and Dean knew it, he did, knew Sam was always sorry, always.
“Maybe you do have a bit of the devil in you,” said Dean, tugging the sheet from the bed to cover the pastor’s wife, as Sam rooted through her bedside table and dresser and desk, looking for things to steal. Sam liked things that had belonged to the demons, or the people the demons stole. Said they had a bit of the devil left in them. Kept them in the car. For protection, he’d said, and then also ’cause it’s cool. Sam took money, sometimes, too, jewelry, things to steal. Gotta feed us somehow, jerk, Sam had said, never mind Dad’s credit card schemes and Dean’s hustling and hey, he had a point.
“Maybe,” said Dean, laying the sheet over the lady’s waxy body, because Bobby Singer said the dead deserve respect, because it wasn’t her fault a demon got her, “maybe there’s some devil in you, Sammy.”
“What’re you gonna do about it?” Sam asked, turning the nightstand over and rummaging through what spilled out. “Gonna kill me? Hmm?”
“No, Sam,” said Dean, tugging the edge of the sheet over the corner of the lady’s arm.
“Good. ’Cause Dean, I think a bit of the devil’s a good thing.”
One time, Dean got talking to a stranger in a bar and for once Sam didn’t later tell him the guy was a demon, and they just had a nice conversation, and they were drunk and talking sex and the bartender’s name was Sarah and the guy said he had his first time with a Sarah and it was after prom and he was nervous as a kitten, and Dean thought of his first time, with this pinched and smudged looking lady who didn’t say her name, and he was maybe fourteen and she said “What a pretty one you are!” and he was standing by the vending machine at six in the morning because Sam woke up early and wanted a soda and she was stumbling out of another room in the motel and she reached down his pants and when he told Dad, he’d laughed and clapped Dean on the back and it took years, years for Dean to see this wasn’t quite normal and in that moment he’d have given anything to have sex for the first time with an awkward girl named Sarah after prom.
Sam and Dad used to fight a lot, constantly, especially once Sam was big enough to hit back, and they’d beat each other senseless, scream themselves hoarse, and Sam would say you’re crazy, man, you’re so fucking crazy but the next time Dad and Dean were holding down some writhing demon and Dad yelled do it Sam! Sam would do it, and after he’d smile and bounce around, all adrenaline high and happy, and when Dad died Sam stopped saying he was crazy and started being the one who could spot the devils where they hid.
Dad died because of Dean. Sam said it, and Dean knew it, because Sam was driving and he crashed the car, and Dean was in the back because his head hurt and he wanted to sleep and Dad had rolled his eyes but shoved him in and got in the front and the car crashed and Sam got scratched up and Dean’s brain was swollen and pressing against his head but he was used to that feeling, and Dad was dead, didn’t even wake up after they crashed, never even said goodbye, and that was on Dean, he knew, he knew he knew he knew he had to make it better had to kill them all it was their fault they got Sam to crash the car he was sure he was sure he didn’t need Sam to tell him one more time because he already knew.
“Was it this lady?” asked Dean, as Sam pulled the pastor’s wife’s hand out from under the sheet to yank off her wedding ring. “Who made you crash the car?”
“Shut the fuck up,” said Sam. “It wasn’t her.”
Damn, thought Dean. Maybe next time.
Sometimes the devil took Dean, but instead of making him wild, like Sam, it made him tired, made him petulant, made him want to lie on bed all day and never move, never see another throat cut, never bleed another demon out dry, never cut a stomach just so, never see organs glistening like cartoon jewels, never shoot anybody in the head, never, never, not again. That was the devil and he knew it and Dad used to drag him from the bed by the scruff of his neck and slap him, once, twice, again and again, shake him, bash him against the wall, scream. If he cried it was worse. Because they had to be brave. They had to be.
Sam was nicer, when the devil took Dean and drained him of his will to fight. He didn’t even hit him, usually, not usually, just told him that he couldn’t let the devil take him, said remember what Dad taught us? and Dean would think about it, about Dad closing his small fingers over the knife and saying go on now, son, finish it off and guiding his hand as Dean pulled the knife through a man’s chest and it was harder than he expected, when Daddy did it the skin always broke easy like butter but they did it together and there was blood all up Dean’s arms and he could see the way it came in beats with the man’s heart and then stopped when the heart did and that was after the screaming and before Dad pried the knife from his hands and said atta boy, Dean, and Dean’s whole chest filled with happiness like a big red balloon.
They had a babysitter once who was Dad’s friend from the Army, Bobby Singer, and he let Dean sleep in, he held Sammy’s arms when he thrashed and said calm down, boy, where’s the fire, and when that made Dean flinch he sat down with him and rubbed his back and asked about the bruises and asked about Daddy getting drunk and what Daddy did to work and what did he mean about looking like Mary and did Sammy get like that often and how often do you eat and how long is your daddy gone and how’d you get a scar like that and so many questions and the hand at his back made Dean feel like the room was too small and Dean started to cry and Bobby Singer eased an arm around his shoulders and shushed him like he shushed Sammy, it’s okay, it’s okay, Dean, and he believed it for a moment and used to love going to Bobby Singer’s because there was food and sleeping in and so much gentleness-you’re a gentle soul, Dean, Bobby said once, and his hug was without compromise or expectation and it was lovely and he felt like he’d partaken in something wonderful and secret like a stolen candy-and one day Bobby packed them both into a car and got two states over before Daddy showed up and dragged them both roughly out of the motel and they never saw Bobby Singer again.
Sam says getting angry is good because they have devils to kill, don’t you remember Dean? and that’s why he gets too mad and makes a mess with the bodies or hits out at Dean, and Sam is just like Dad, who used to shout and attack them and you have to be tough, son, and Dad was always too rough with the bodies, too messy, said that was God’s fucking reckoning for them and he was doing God’s will and could do it however he damn well pleased and Sam hated that, when he got older, said they had to be careful, and Sam was, usually, except when he wasn’t.
Sam was always angry. He was born angry. He was a fussy baby. He’d thrash and writhe and kick and scream when he was small and Dean would sit in the corner and hold him tighter than tight and rock back and forth, same as when Dad pushed them into closets to hide from the devils before they got big enough to help kill them, same as when Sam was too young to fight Dad back and instead just screamed and cried until he was red in the face with snot streaming down his face, and even now he’s always pissed, angry at the girls he has sex with (Dean can hear the high, gaspy-pained noises they make for him, nothing like the ones they make for Dean), and angry with strangers and devils and Dean, always angry, but that’s good, he says, it’s good.
“Did he have to kill her?” Dean said, bending to look at the pictures of the pastor’s wife with her husband, with her kids, with parishioners and family members and some dogs, on a beach, in a snowy field, at a dinner table, at the alter. “Couldn’t we have bled the demon out without killing her?”
“You’re so stupid, Dean,” said Sam, “everybody knows once there’s a demon in you, you gotta die.”
“What about the demon in you?” Dean asked, suddenly fearful, thinking of the car crash.
“That was different,” said Sam absently, distractedly, already focused on cleaning the knife at the kitchen sink, almost exasperated, like there’s something Dean doesn’t get.
“I don’t get it,” said Dean.
“I didn’t expect you to,” said Sam, holding up the knife to inspect it.
Dean cried the first time Dad made him kill somebody, and Dad laughed, and when Sam cried Dean didn’t laugh even though Dad did. You don’t have to be tough all the time, Dean had whispered to Sam on the way home, in the back of the car, clothes stiff with blood, petting the top of Sam’s head, because Sam was maybe ten and still let him get away with that girly stuff.
“Do you know why I love this job?” says Sam, grimacing as Dean dips another French fry into the milkshake and savors it.
“Why?” asks Dean, thinking of demons and devils and the purging of evil, thinking of all the work they’ve done for God, of Dad telling him it’ll all be worth it when judgment day comes, of Sam rolling his eyes and saying right, Dean, kill all the devils that made me kill Dad and still smiling like he knows something Dean doesn’t, of Dad telling him to be tough and of his very first memory besides the fire that killed Mom, which is of Dad coming back to a motel room and sitting down at the bed where Sammy was curled against Dean, asleep and oblivious with his sweet little baby breath, and running a coppery-smelling hand through Dean’s hair and saying this is what it’s all about, son, and Dean said what, Daddy? and Dad smiled with all the fondness in the world and said one less devil in the world, and Dean nodded, like he understood even though he didn’t, he didn’t ever understand it but Daddy said there were devils and to kill them and Sammy said it too and they loved him nobody else loves you just us and they wouldn’t lie, they wouldn’t, so-
“Why do you love this job, Sammy?”
“Because,” says Sam, grinning widely, conspiratorially, like he’s seven and Dean has just stolen him a candy bar, like he’s four and they’re crouching in a closet where Dad shoved them and Dean is saying shh Sammy just pretend now, you’re Daddy on a mission in ’Nam, like he’s two and Dean is making faces at him in a car heading west across flat open country, “because we’re the very fucking best at it.”
Rating: Hard PG-13.
Words: ~3,500
Spoilers: None really, completely AU.
Warnings: Violence, language, child abuse, reasonably minor gore, briefly hinted-at sexual abuse, psychological issues, general misery, very very terrible father!John, psychotic!Sam, broken!lost!Dean. Not a happy story.
Summary: John Winchester's sons are on a mission from God. This is set in some indeterminable time after John's death, but if the cops are onto the Winchesters Dean doesn't know it. Written for the eternally fabulous prufrock_26, who wanted PTSD!murdering!John, psychotic murder!Sam, and a Dean who still thought that his family killed demons. This could also theoretically be a prequel to part two of " Variations on a Theme."
Neurotic author's notes: Title and cut text both from Johnny Cash's "God's Gonna Cut You Down." I wrote the bulk of this on the train and I'm not 100% pleased with this fic, as I wanted Dean's mental process to be a little more disjointed and Sam's manipulation a little clearer, but whatever, I got good news from the doctor today (this! is! so! rare! I'm! over! the! fucking! moon!!) and I wanted to post fic. Bruce, my love, I hope you like it. :)
“God, do I love a fucked-up boy.”
Her name is Mallory and she’s talking right into his ear, purring like a kitty, because sometime between take me home, handsome and what can I say, you seem like a good boy, all teasing, all teeth, he’d choked out a no ma’am, he was laughing, but it was true, the truest thing he knew, I’m a fuck up.
She didn’t believe him then, he thinks, but she believes him now, pulling off his shirt and pants and finding all those marks, marks Dad put there and bad (evil dark horrible nasty demon) people (not people never people Dean) put there and marks he put there, once or twice, the odd stunted scar from when Sammy gets mad, and now she believes him. She doesn’t know the dirt under his nails is from the local pastor’s wife, whose pretty hair he’d smoothed down after they cut her throat and Sam had laughed and said “You’re suck a fuck-up, Dean.”
She doesn’t know that but she does believe him when he says he’s a fuck-up and she’s closing her mouth over his anyways, pressure, hands around his neck, in his hair, trailing down to his torso and something hot and wonderful is building in his belly and his groin and he’s good at this, lots of people have said so, he knows.
Dean likes women. Likes them a lot. They’re easy. They’re safe. When Dean was small sometimes women from schools and neighborhoods would cluck their tongues and run their hands through his hair or Sammy’s and thumb over the marks on his arms or face and say “Sweetheart, are you okay?” and that was sort of nice because mostly Dean doesn’t like being touched but when it’s a girl and her face is all soft and sorry it’s nice. It’s nice.
Girls are easier for other reasons. He’s stronger than they are. He’s bigger than most. He can hold them down. Sometimes when they’re done struggling because they’ve bled the evil out their necks or their stomachs or else they’re unconscious, Sam will smile like he’s got a secret and reach down between their legs. He says Dean can, too, and sometimes Dean does, sometimes he runs a cautionary hand over their breasts and feels the softness there, but it always feels like he’s cheating, like he’s taking something he hasn’t earned, so he usually leaves that to Sam, who calls him a fuck-up.
“Sammy, every girl you sleep with turns out to be evil,” says Dean one day in the car, and Sam’s face splits into a hundred-watt grin and he laughs fondly and says “Oh, Dean,” and Dean doesn’t really get why that’s funny but Sammy smiles are like diamonds in the dust so who’s he to complain?
Dean looks like a girl, Dad used to say sometimes, looks like Mary, and something in the way Dad used to say it when he was drunk and prone to collapsing on top of Dean and being too handsy, too affectionate, it didn’t feel right and made Dean queasy but if there’s one thing Dean knows it’s that Dad was always right and you can’t mention Mom or Mary so shut up, Dean, shut the fuck up. Real girls at least are gentle, so Dean doesn’t mind so much.
Dean likes girls because they’re soft and sweet and he can sort of remember, when he tries, his mom, singing and touching gently and things were different then, softer, lighter, he can’t remember where Dad was, then, or where the demons were, just Mom and the soft way she laughed like Christmas bells, and Dean is not supposed to talk about Mom, never ever shut up don’t even say her fucking name, so he doesn’t, much, but the best part of the night he spends with Mallory isn’t the sex, it’s after when he falls down onto his stomach and she curls up next to him with her arm slung over his waist around his back close and comforting and she wakes up before him but it’s okay because Sam is gonna be wondering where he is.
Dinner that night is burgers, and fries and a milkshake and Sam says Dean eats like a pig but fuck Sam, he’s never been really hungry, Dean was sure of that (because Sammy needs to eat Dean Jesus fucking Christ are those his ribs what the fuck is wrong with you). Dean knows he ain’t worth much but he did a good job today (devils all around Dean-o and they all gotta die every one dead is a good day) and he can have a fucking milkshake if he wants.
“They way you eat sometimes,” says Sam, kind of fondly, and then Dean dips his French fry in his milkshake and Sam makes a little angry-cat sound and says, “I swear, you’re gonna make me sick,” and Dean wants to point out that there’s something funny because Sam gets sick at a fried potato soaked in melted ice cream but not at that pastor’s wife with her neck raggedly cut open and the demon bleeding into the nice carpet and Dean’s hand smoothing back her hair while Sam breaks her crucifix with his giant bloody hand and Dean has seen that hand break so many things, necks and bottles and once a whole bird when Sam was just a small thing, out in the yard and Dean yelled for Dad and got in trouble for crying, and now he’s breaking a crucifix and then he holds its jagged end up and smirks between Dean and the lady and says “Remember The Exorcist?” and then Dean is patting her hair and Sam says he’s a fuck-up, and all that Sam can stomach but Dean dips his French fry in the milkshake and suddenly Sam’s gonna be sick, that’s hilarious, it is, but Dean knows better than to Ever Talk About the Job, so he smirks and keeps eating.
Sammy didn’t get sick much as a baby, French fry dipping aside, because Dean took good care of him, real good care, always, fed him and brushed his wild hair and when he got real mad and red in the face and screamed Dean would sit in the corner and rock him until he stopped thrashing, and when Dad once bashed Sam’s head against the table while they were having dinner Dean plugged up his bleeding nose and carried him to bed because he was still so small and when he slept for two days Dean didn’t panic just pet his hair and sang to him and cleaned up the bed where he peed and hid the wet sheets from Dad who found them anyways and kicked Dean right in the ribs which Dean deserved because Sammy was still asleep and Dad asked him what kind of pussy he was, anyways, crying like that, and Dean didn’t know who Dad was mad at so he sat on the bed with Sammy and when his brother woke up and threw up into his lap he didn’t even get mad, didn’t even hit Sam because he’d been asleep for so long and didn’t know any better.
Can’t have pussies for sons, Dad said, because there’s so much evil out there, you gotta be strong, stronger, Dean, stronger, when Dean ran and ran until his chest felt like something torn open and flapping in the wind and that night Dad took him to a graveyard and they lit a grave on fire and Dean helped with the digging and lit the body himself and Dad touched his head and said that’s what I’m talking about and Dean thought maybe it wasn’t so bad, being Dean Winchester.
Being Dean Winchester wasn’t so bad when there was Sammy alive and well and not screaming and not kicking and just smiling because his brother was there.
“What are you grinning about?” Sam asks, peering at Dean over the milkshake.
“You,” says Dean.
“Freak,” says Sam, like I love you.
Something was the matter with Sam. Dad had been telling him for years and years, that was why he was so stubborn, why he kicked and screamed and cried and thrashed and threw tantrums with his whole body, why Mom died from the fire in his nursery, why their luck was so nasty. Maybe, Dean supposed, maybe it was why every girl Sam ever fucked needed to die. Something’s wrong with Sam, Dad said, we might have to kill him, and that scared Dean more than anything so he decided to make Sammy the best demon killer in the whole wide world, better than him or Dad or anybody, and then it wouldn’t matter, than Sam wouldn’t have to die, because when everything else was rushing in his ears and coming to pieces and falling apart there was still Sam, his wide sweet face and his little moles and his soft hair and even when he laughed at Dean or hit him he still needed him, still said he was sorry after, so sorry, so sorry Dean, and Dean knew it, he did, knew Sam was always sorry, always.
“Maybe you do have a bit of the devil in you,” said Dean, tugging the sheet from the bed to cover the pastor’s wife, as Sam rooted through her bedside table and dresser and desk, looking for things to steal. Sam liked things that had belonged to the demons, or the people the demons stole. Said they had a bit of the devil left in them. Kept them in the car. For protection, he’d said, and then also ’cause it’s cool. Sam took money, sometimes, too, jewelry, things to steal. Gotta feed us somehow, jerk, Sam had said, never mind Dad’s credit card schemes and Dean’s hustling and hey, he had a point.
“Maybe,” said Dean, laying the sheet over the lady’s waxy body, because Bobby Singer said the dead deserve respect, because it wasn’t her fault a demon got her, “maybe there’s some devil in you, Sammy.”
“What’re you gonna do about it?” Sam asked, turning the nightstand over and rummaging through what spilled out. “Gonna kill me? Hmm?”
“No, Sam,” said Dean, tugging the edge of the sheet over the corner of the lady’s arm.
“Good. ’Cause Dean, I think a bit of the devil’s a good thing.”
One time, Dean got talking to a stranger in a bar and for once Sam didn’t later tell him the guy was a demon, and they just had a nice conversation, and they were drunk and talking sex and the bartender’s name was Sarah and the guy said he had his first time with a Sarah and it was after prom and he was nervous as a kitten, and Dean thought of his first time, with this pinched and smudged looking lady who didn’t say her name, and he was maybe fourteen and she said “What a pretty one you are!” and he was standing by the vending machine at six in the morning because Sam woke up early and wanted a soda and she was stumbling out of another room in the motel and she reached down his pants and when he told Dad, he’d laughed and clapped Dean on the back and it took years, years for Dean to see this wasn’t quite normal and in that moment he’d have given anything to have sex for the first time with an awkward girl named Sarah after prom.
Sam and Dad used to fight a lot, constantly, especially once Sam was big enough to hit back, and they’d beat each other senseless, scream themselves hoarse, and Sam would say you’re crazy, man, you’re so fucking crazy but the next time Dad and Dean were holding down some writhing demon and Dad yelled do it Sam! Sam would do it, and after he’d smile and bounce around, all adrenaline high and happy, and when Dad died Sam stopped saying he was crazy and started being the one who could spot the devils where they hid.
Dad died because of Dean. Sam said it, and Dean knew it, because Sam was driving and he crashed the car, and Dean was in the back because his head hurt and he wanted to sleep and Dad had rolled his eyes but shoved him in and got in the front and the car crashed and Sam got scratched up and Dean’s brain was swollen and pressing against his head but he was used to that feeling, and Dad was dead, didn’t even wake up after they crashed, never even said goodbye, and that was on Dean, he knew, he knew he knew he knew he had to make it better had to kill them all it was their fault they got Sam to crash the car he was sure he was sure he didn’t need Sam to tell him one more time because he already knew.
“Was it this lady?” asked Dean, as Sam pulled the pastor’s wife’s hand out from under the sheet to yank off her wedding ring. “Who made you crash the car?”
“Shut the fuck up,” said Sam. “It wasn’t her.”
Damn, thought Dean. Maybe next time.
Sometimes the devil took Dean, but instead of making him wild, like Sam, it made him tired, made him petulant, made him want to lie on bed all day and never move, never see another throat cut, never bleed another demon out dry, never cut a stomach just so, never see organs glistening like cartoon jewels, never shoot anybody in the head, never, never, not again. That was the devil and he knew it and Dad used to drag him from the bed by the scruff of his neck and slap him, once, twice, again and again, shake him, bash him against the wall, scream. If he cried it was worse. Because they had to be brave. They had to be.
Sam was nicer, when the devil took Dean and drained him of his will to fight. He didn’t even hit him, usually, not usually, just told him that he couldn’t let the devil take him, said remember what Dad taught us? and Dean would think about it, about Dad closing his small fingers over the knife and saying go on now, son, finish it off and guiding his hand as Dean pulled the knife through a man’s chest and it was harder than he expected, when Daddy did it the skin always broke easy like butter but they did it together and there was blood all up Dean’s arms and he could see the way it came in beats with the man’s heart and then stopped when the heart did and that was after the screaming and before Dad pried the knife from his hands and said atta boy, Dean, and Dean’s whole chest filled with happiness like a big red balloon.
They had a babysitter once who was Dad’s friend from the Army, Bobby Singer, and he let Dean sleep in, he held Sammy’s arms when he thrashed and said calm down, boy, where’s the fire, and when that made Dean flinch he sat down with him and rubbed his back and asked about the bruises and asked about Daddy getting drunk and what Daddy did to work and what did he mean about looking like Mary and did Sammy get like that often and how often do you eat and how long is your daddy gone and how’d you get a scar like that and so many questions and the hand at his back made Dean feel like the room was too small and Dean started to cry and Bobby Singer eased an arm around his shoulders and shushed him like he shushed Sammy, it’s okay, it’s okay, Dean, and he believed it for a moment and used to love going to Bobby Singer’s because there was food and sleeping in and so much gentleness-you’re a gentle soul, Dean, Bobby said once, and his hug was without compromise or expectation and it was lovely and he felt like he’d partaken in something wonderful and secret like a stolen candy-and one day Bobby packed them both into a car and got two states over before Daddy showed up and dragged them both roughly out of the motel and they never saw Bobby Singer again.
Sam says getting angry is good because they have devils to kill, don’t you remember Dean? and that’s why he gets too mad and makes a mess with the bodies or hits out at Dean, and Sam is just like Dad, who used to shout and attack them and you have to be tough, son, and Dad was always too rough with the bodies, too messy, said that was God’s fucking reckoning for them and he was doing God’s will and could do it however he damn well pleased and Sam hated that, when he got older, said they had to be careful, and Sam was, usually, except when he wasn’t.
Sam was always angry. He was born angry. He was a fussy baby. He’d thrash and writhe and kick and scream when he was small and Dean would sit in the corner and hold him tighter than tight and rock back and forth, same as when Dad pushed them into closets to hide from the devils before they got big enough to help kill them, same as when Sam was too young to fight Dad back and instead just screamed and cried until he was red in the face with snot streaming down his face, and even now he’s always pissed, angry at the girls he has sex with (Dean can hear the high, gaspy-pained noises they make for him, nothing like the ones they make for Dean), and angry with strangers and devils and Dean, always angry, but that’s good, he says, it’s good.
“Did he have to kill her?” Dean said, bending to look at the pictures of the pastor’s wife with her husband, with her kids, with parishioners and family members and some dogs, on a beach, in a snowy field, at a dinner table, at the alter. “Couldn’t we have bled the demon out without killing her?”
“You’re so stupid, Dean,” said Sam, “everybody knows once there’s a demon in you, you gotta die.”
“What about the demon in you?” Dean asked, suddenly fearful, thinking of the car crash.
“That was different,” said Sam absently, distractedly, already focused on cleaning the knife at the kitchen sink, almost exasperated, like there’s something Dean doesn’t get.
“I don’t get it,” said Dean.
“I didn’t expect you to,” said Sam, holding up the knife to inspect it.
Dean cried the first time Dad made him kill somebody, and Dad laughed, and when Sam cried Dean didn’t laugh even though Dad did. You don’t have to be tough all the time, Dean had whispered to Sam on the way home, in the back of the car, clothes stiff with blood, petting the top of Sam’s head, because Sam was maybe ten and still let him get away with that girly stuff.
“Do you know why I love this job?” says Sam, grimacing as Dean dips another French fry into the milkshake and savors it.
“Why?” asks Dean, thinking of demons and devils and the purging of evil, thinking of all the work they’ve done for God, of Dad telling him it’ll all be worth it when judgment day comes, of Sam rolling his eyes and saying right, Dean, kill all the devils that made me kill Dad and still smiling like he knows something Dean doesn’t, of Dad telling him to be tough and of his very first memory besides the fire that killed Mom, which is of Dad coming back to a motel room and sitting down at the bed where Sammy was curled against Dean, asleep and oblivious with his sweet little baby breath, and running a coppery-smelling hand through Dean’s hair and saying this is what it’s all about, son, and Dean said what, Daddy? and Dad smiled with all the fondness in the world and said one less devil in the world, and Dean nodded, like he understood even though he didn’t, he didn’t ever understand it but Daddy said there were devils and to kill them and Sammy said it too and they loved him nobody else loves you just us and they wouldn’t lie, they wouldn’t, so-
“Why do you love this job, Sammy?”
“Because,” says Sam, grinning widely, conspiratorially, like he’s seven and Dean has just stolen him a candy bar, like he’s four and they’re crouching in a closet where Dad shoved them and Dean is saying shh Sammy just pretend now, you’re Daddy on a mission in ’Nam, like he’s two and Dean is making faces at him in a car heading west across flat open country, “because we’re the very fucking best at it.”