original by maygra
Remix Title: Wuxing (Five Goings) (1/2)
Remix Author: poisontaster
Original Story: Elementum Res. Progressus
Original Author: maygra
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Warnings: Language, sex, m/m incest, violence, torture, mentions of rape.
AN: Whereas Western thought developed the idea of elements as substances, and Indian thought as emanations, Chinese philosophy conceived of the five elements, or Wu Xing, as dynamic states of change.
FIRE GENERATES EARTH
Begin at the beginning.
Except there are lots of beginnings. As the pieces of their past are consumed and burned to ash behind them, they have to start again, anew, find work-arounds for damaged tissues, invent things from whole cloth because the alternative is unthinkable.
This is a beginning: A screaming baby is pushed into the arms of a boy almost too small to hold him. "Take your brother outside and don't look back. Now, Dean, go!"
This is another: "Dad's on a hunting trip...and he hasn't been home in a few days."
Mostly he's stopped counting the times he's picked himself up and gone on from the broken eggshell of a past life. He manipulates his façade through hundreds of names and cities and holds secret the fragile pilot light at his core. He rises like a phoenix and never looks back longer than he has to in order to see what's chasing him.
Because something always is.
Being with Sam again doesn't feel like a beginning no matter how much he wants it to be, which is maybe how it catches him off-guard. Sometimes these things can only be seen in retrospect.
Like, for example, and just say...maybe ducking into both Sam's line of fire and the reach of a werewolf's claws to shove the muzzle of your shotgun under its chin and blow its brains out may not be the smartest thing you've ever done.
What? It worked, right?
And the thing had pissed him off.
But that's not good enough for Sam, oh no, growling all the way back to the motel like he's the beast here and throwing around words like stupid and could've been killed and kill you myself.
And really, that's all he thinks it is-Sammy blowing off some steam and adrenaline-until Sam's knotting his monkey paws into the front of Dean's shirt and slamming him hard up against the wall, screaming, "Goddamn it, Dean! Goddamn it!"
Ow. Why is it always the wall?
And then he realizes: oh. This is serious.
So he sort of pets Sam on the shoulder, clumsily, because Sam's still got him in that death grip and he's sort of up on tiptoes and he says, "It's cool, Sam." See how he was careful to say Sam? "Everything's c...."
But he can see from Sam's eyes that it's not cool, it's not cool at all, and Sam gives this kind of hysterical half-laugh, dragging Dean away from the wall only to shove him back into the plaster again until he thinks there's going to be a Dean-shaped print in the wall-ow-and then, and then, he's kissing Dean-like...kissing him-and Dean thinks: oh. This is serious.
But that's pretty close to the time where thinking just about finishes up because Dean's kissing Sam back and it's just like their arguing, all heat and demand and the utter inability to give or back the fuck down, translated to a new form
A new art form, shit, because Sammy's a lot better at this kissing thing than he is at arguing. And Sam was going to be a lawyer; he pretty much had that arguing thing down pat.
Dean doesn't even realize he's hard, though, until Sam's fingers fumble across his erection straining at the front of his pants, clumsy and groping and then it's almost all he can focus on: Sam and this; him and Sam.
Sam jokes with Dean about his lack of education but they both know bored isn't the same as stupid. Dean always liked practical classes, sciences, math, shop, even his brief but memorable stint with Home Ec. Dean likes the Big Bang Theory. Not the same way he did when he was twelve, sniggering behind his hand...okay, maybe still a little like that. But there's something fundamental there that appeals to him, over and above his not so well hidden pyromaniacal tendencies. The idea that the world starts in fire, a clash that should be-could be-cataclysmic but instead is the start of everything. The idea of all these pieces, waiting, and then slagged by fire into something more than they were before.
He can't rightly say if these pieces of himself and Sam were always waiting for this. He's not the guy for that kind of navel gazing; if that's what you're looking for, you need to look to the guy underneath him, writhing and cursing in a thick, smoky voice Dean hardly recognizes. (Stupid, Sam says, dragging his head, his mouth down again and snarling against Dean's lips. Such a fucking asshole...yeah, yeah like that...oh. Oh, fuck...) But if they were, those pieces, they had to have been like that universe-in-waiting, tiny as dust particles and easily overlooked, because Dean never saw them, even though they seem so obvious now.
Dean listens to the ragged sob of Sam's breath as he licks and gnaws the searing skin of Sam's throat, leaving the imprint of himself on Sam's surface instead of allowing it to sink deep where he can't see it anymore. Sam's ragged, bitten nails leave gouges of their own in Dean's skin but it's not the first or last time that Sam's made him bleed and it's better than most of them.
Once, after Sam left but before Dad did, Dad sent Dean down to Mexico on a job. Having even less desire to end up in the Mexican jail system than the American one, he'd elected to camp out in the dry, dusty hills. The second morning, he'd woken unexpectedly early and had been sitting quiet, drinking down one of the bottles of water he'd brought with him when he saw... Well. He doesn't rightfully know what it was, never having seen anything like it before or since. Never really having even heard of anything like it except in story books, but if he had to call it something, he'd call it a dragon. A real live dragon.
Not that it had looked like any of the pictures from those books. It was tabbied in the different colors of sand and earth, sort of like a gecko and bristled with curving spikes that looked oddly delicate at this distance but Dean bets they'd go through a man like a needle. It moved like a lizard too, quick, mincing steps on flexible black toes. Every few yards, it would stop, kind of shudder like it was about to sneeze and was momentarily engulfed in a blue haze of ball lightning. After the third or fourth time, Dean thought wonderingly, it's bleeding off; grounding off excess charge into the flat, pebbled and arid ground until it was just an amazingly large lizard.
And if Dean has to think about it-and he's got to think about something because for someone who's never had a cock in his mouth, Sam is disturbingly good at this and Dean's going to blow his wad like a kid on his first fuck if he's not careful-he reckons that this might be like that dragon.
That there's this whole secret to Sam that no one but him has ever seen and no one but him has ever got and a whole lifetime could go back and no one else ever would.
And that it would be real easy-especially in their line of work-for one of them to just...burn up or burn out or explode under the pressure without the other one to hold them down, to take that excess energy and bleed it away so that they're safe again, hidden again.
And his last thought isn't real clear, even at the time; if he had to mold it into something resembling words, being Dean, it would probably come out something like this:
Yeah. Okay.
EARTH GENERATES METAL
Sam's felt restless in his skin all day.
Skin too tight, blood rushing too fast...jittery. Nervy. He feels as though, if something doesn't happen soon, he's going to explode from internal pressure.
Dean, as usual, seems oblivious, humming happily under his breath as they tramp through last year's leaves. If they weren't tracking, he'd probably whistle as well, or maybe sing.
It's almost time for this year's leaves to start dropping; Sam can see some of them are already starting to turn, gold, scarlet and orange, shocking blurts of color in the restless fields of dulling green and brown. Sam tells himself that his edginess is because of these woods, old and stately and alien in the way all trees old enough to truly remember are. He tells himself it's because he's a city boy at heart, beloved of those places where books and soap and music can be had for the asking. But the truth is he and Jess spent hours and days hiking through California's redwood forests and he never felt like this, uneasy and nervous.
So maybe it's just that you're fucking your brother, his mind supplies unexpectedly and Sam bites down on semi-hysterical laughter, though not soon enough to keep Dean from giving him one of Those Looks.
"S'nothing," Sam says, his voice shaking with the effort of not laughing. "Brain fart."
Dean's eyebrows lift up another millimeter or so, but he just says, "Least those stink less than the ones you were laying down last night. No more onions for you, Sammy my boy."
And so Sam punches him one and then Dean tackles him. Sam goes down in a tangle of knees and elbows and then it's just like every other episode of the Sam and Dean Traveling Sideshow...at least until Dean moves wrong, or Sam does-and by that he means the right way-and suddenly Sam's sporting wood like one of the mighty oaks around them.
They freeze. Dean's face, his eyes, look shocked and somehow very young, almost scared, as if Sam's caught him doing something wrong. They're not used to this, Sam realizes, either of them. They haven't overwritten the habits of years as siblings with the new history of lovers and the lines are blurry and weird.
Then Dean's face closes like a wound scabbing over and he writhes his hips against Sam's, deliberate. Once. Twice.
Sam makes a whining sound deep in his throat, the thrum in his blood, the enthusiastic excitement of his dick bringing him up to meet Dean. Then: "Get off me, you whore." Sam shoves Dean's shoulders, shoving Dean off him and it's not quite as weird.
"Aw, c'mon, Sammy," Dean protests, even though he's already getting to his feet. He holds out his hand and snags Sam's wrist, hauling him upright like he's still twelve and gangling. Quick-fast Dean's other hand cups over Sam's cock, the heel grinding pleasure-painful against the shaft. "Sure you don't want some help with that little problem?"
"Yeah, how about some time when we're not in the middle of the haunted woods?" Sam says, tugging vainly at the crotch of his jeans to find some configuration where they don't abrade or tease his sensitized flesh. "And it's not so little, jerkass. As you well know."
"You have no spirit of adventure," Dean says loftily but he's already turning away. He's humming again, atonal and unrecognized, fingers tapping out a drum beat against his thigh as he raises his head like he's scenting the wind.
It's like a catalyst, though. Suddenly the sex is between them again and Sam is distracted by the pressure of his cock-which will not deflate no matter how many unsexy thoughts he forces through his mind-and in some kind of perverse torture, even his ass feels delicate and engorged, almost wet, as if just begging him to take Dean up on his offer.
Or offers, because suddenly Dean also seems as equally interested in Sam's ass as he is in the hunt, taking every opportunity to proposition him-usually with the worst lame-ass come-on lines-or 'accidentally' brush against him or fondle him until finally-and most unnervingly of all-Dean holds Sam pressed immobile against one of the trees while he ruts against Sam's back, teeth grazing the nape of Sam's neck and his nose snuffling in the thick clump of Sam's hair.
"Dean," he says, shaky and a little scared and a lot turned on, as Dean's hand creeps around his hip to pull him back more firmly against Dean's cock. "Dean, wait, please... Something's wrong."
"Smell so good," Dean growls, thrusting against Sam again, grinding Sam into the bark until he worries about it being printed in his skin. "So good. Why won't you let me fuck you, Sammy? Thought we were doing that now, fucking."
"Not like this." Sam wriggles, trying to find the leverage to push back, but it's useless. Dean's got his legs spread too wide, is pressed too tight against him. "Dammit, Dean, can't you feel it? Something's wrong. Something's wrong with us."
Dean lets go of him so fast that Sam falls backwards on his butt, cushioned only by the spongy layer of leaves and pine mast. It aches deep in his ass and in his cock and he can only stare up at the look on Dean's face, shocked, a frisson of cold winding in and out of his spine and nerve endings. Five years ago, when he first saw that look, he hadn't known what it meant-what was hiding behind it. When he'd left Dad and Dean for school, he hadn't seen-understood-how his going would rip Dean to pieces, the way he hadn't seen a lot of things about Dean...or himself, for that matter. Time-and sharing a bed-has changed a lot of that.
"Knew you'd say that," Dean says in the same growly-dull voice. Sam wants to leap up, pin Dean against the same tree and kiss and mouth and hump against him until the closed, stormy look on Dean's face gives way and they can go back to horny and happy and teasing, but he can't move, frozen on his palms and haunches, his heart beating too fast in his throat. "Just a matter of time. Just...didn't think it'd be this soon."
Dean turns his back. Sam divines Dean's intention a second too late, finally broken out of his paralysis to scramble to his feet, saying, "Wait, Dean-that's not what I meant..." as Dean takes off running.
By the time Sam gets all the way up, his brother is gone.
"Fuck!" Sam shouts at the top of his lungs, not caring if the ghosts or whatever haunts these woods hears him.
It takes him three hours to backtrack to the Impala, casting around for any sign of Dean the whole way. Even more stupidly, his cock still rides at half-mast, throbbing and persistent, and he wonders if someone slipped them a roofie or Viagra or something. The whole front of his shorts feels clammy and disgusting.
The Impala's still there, gleaming darkly in the westering sunlight, but Dean is not. Sam curses a lot, both aloud and under his breath, and then picks the locks to open the hood. He pulls a handful of spark plugs and the starter coil-not that he really thinks Dean would leave him, but better safe than sorry, and let's hope they don't need to leave in a hurry-and then goes around to the trunk to find a clean (or not too dirty) pair of boxers.
He strips quickly, paranoid about hikers-though they haven't seen any so far-and alternately worried about, horny for and irritated with Dean. He's stepping into the new boxers-dick more than half-hard now and bobbing distractingly against his belly-and scanning the woods watchfully when he spots Dean.
Dean's standing just inside the starting fringe of trees, half-obscured by screening second-growth foliage. Something's wrong with the picture but Sam can't quite place it as he takes a half step in Dean's direction. "Dean!"
Dean grins at him, frank and appreciative, and Sam remembers he's still dick out, only half in his shorts. Blushing across what feels like his whole body, Sam fumbles to drag his other leg into his underwear while hop-hobbling towards his brother. "Dean!"
Sam steps on a twig sharply with his socked foot and stumbles, hands and one knee smacking into the thick soil. By the time he wrenches up his head again, Dean's gone. "Dean! Dammit. Dean!"
Horns. That's what it was, what was wrong with the way Dean had looked; tiny, nubby little buttons of brown horn pushing out from his skin. Fucking horns.
He takes off after Dean, afraid he'll lose him again. The sun's going down and the woods are huge; in the dark, he'll never find him. Whipcord thin branches and razor-edged leaves cut Sam's unprotected legs and he thinks about going back for his jeans and boots but the fear-inarticulate but dire-is stronger and so he keeps churning forward, steeled against everything except the singular thought of losing Dean.
Once he's through the scrubby border, the forest opens around him again, the light already faded and thick with shadow. Sam bites down on panic and makes himself concentrate on the ground beneath his feet. The detritus of leaves and soft pine scuffed off to his left gives him direction.
Several yards later, his socked foot tangles in something soft; Dean's shirt, the sleeves turned inside out. Not long after that, Dean's tee-shirt, reeking of Dean like he's been wearing it for days. The smell of it makes Sam groan and his cock thicken, every step after that an exercise in absurdity and agony that would make him cry if he wasn't so freaked out.
He's standing by a tree that's been liberally drenched in what he assumes is Dean's piss-nice one, Dean-o, toilet trained much?-when he realizes he hears music. When he realizes it's the same music Dean's been humming all day. And suddenly, it just clicks, all the pieces coming together in his mind.
Oh, fuck me, Sam thinks. How could we have been so stupid?
They've gathered in one of the clearings when Sam comes upon them. It's almost full dark and he can't see them all, even with the ur-light of their lamps and torches. It doesn't feel like many, though plenty enough to be dangerous to him-to them-and Sam wonders if there's many of them even left, driven further and deeper and out.
The King sits in shadow and is only a shape, an impression of enormous, broad shoulders and phosphorescent eyes and the horns, larger than Dean's, branching again and again until they seem almost like a tree themselves. The Queen sits in the pool of what light there is and it's she that draws his attention, because she's the one who has Dean at her feet, a leash of what looks like oak leaves and vines clasped around Dean's neck and held in her small, brown hand.
Sam can't help the growl that builds in his chest, the hot, tense feeling in his chest. "Mine," he snarls and the host rumbles and hisses its disapproval.
The Queen is tiny but not in the least fragile and Sam has no doubt she can hurt either one of them, kill them, if she so chooses. But she only blinks owlish white eyes at him and tilts her head. ::Mine:: she replies. ::My Hunt. My Hunter.:: She looks down at Dean and runs strangely long fingers over Dean's bare shoulder, making him shudder and sway in her direction. ::Good Hunter::
She talks half in Sam's mind, pictures and feelings in a loose frame of words, barely contained. In her words Sam glimpses other Hunts, other Hunters, culled from other wanderers in these woods, hapless hikers and lonely wanderers. Of course none of them had been good as Dean, smooth and thick muscled, nearly naked now except for...are those leaves? Oh, man, he wishes he had his camera; Dean's never hearing the end of this one... Except that assumes either one of them is getting out of this one.
"Dean," he says, willing his brother to hear him, to recognize him. "Dean."
Dean looks up and across at him and his eyes seem like they glow in the dimness, his freckles like spots of ink across his face and shoulders. Sam remembers his fingers digging into those shoulders, gasping, begging; remembers smoothing his thumbs across those high-planed cheeks and Dean ducking away, ashamed.
"Dean," he says again and something crosses his brother's eyes. Dean moves a couple hopping steps towards him, enough that Sam can see Dean's cock, hard and dark, jutting up and curving into his belly. Dean sniffs toward Sam and his tongue creeps out to outline his mouth in wetness, dark rose against candy pink.
"Mine," Sam says again, more confident this time. "My Hunter. Mine."
The Queen comes down from her throne of twisted, age-silvered oak and takes small mincing steps towards him, Dean shambling in her wake. Sam fights not to flinch, fights harder not to snatch the leash from her hands.
She touches him and her fingers are cold, hard, like wood. Dean snuffles at Sam's fingers and Sam buries them in Dean's hair. Her eyes are different when she pulls back and he can see them again; no less cold or inhuman, but somehow sad, somehow understanding. ::Consort?:: she asks and Sam understands it's an offer as much as a question.
Sam looks at Dean, whose face tips up to him, the green in his eyes brightened to sunlight through a spring leaf. Sam's breath goes out of him and he ghosts his fingertips over the velvety knurls of Dean's horns, not yet budded. Yes.
The Queen nods as if she heard his silent assent and steps away from him, jerking Dean with her. Dean goes reluctantly, straying back towards Sam as Sam suffers the host to surround him, strip him of his remaining clothes and daub his skin in cold mud and scalding hot blood, wind leaves into his hair. He doesn't look at them. He looks at Dean.
::Consort?:: the Queen asks again, inquiringly. He sees in her mind the echo of past rites, past hunts. This can only end one way.
"Yes," Sam says again, this time aloud. His eyes still don't stray from Dean who looks back at him with narrowed eyes.
::Go, then:: she says. ::Run. Run::
And then he is running. The forest passes him in a blur of darkness and he is afraid though his blood runs hot and high. He understands that the longer he evades the hunt, the longer it takes to catch him, the better the rite. He understands too what will happen when Dean catches him. He is afraid.
He doesn't know how long he runs, chased by shadow and the belling echoes of Dean and the host. Long enough to feel like it's always only been this-being chased, being prey. Long enough for his heart to feel too big, slamming too hard against enclosing ribs. Long enough for his legs to ache and throb, echoed in his still unrepentantly hard cock.
It's almost a relief when Dean tackles him.
Sam hits, chest and flailing arm and then chin and the side of his face, sliding in the dry drifts of leaves and bracken. Dean shoves his face into the side of Sam's neck, sniffing, grunting, the thick length of his cock riding between the cheeks of Sam's ass.
"Mine," Dean growls, barely sounding human. His teeth scrape Sam's skin, followed by the wet heat of his tongue. "Sammy. My Sammy. Mine."
Sam could sob at the sound of his name from Dean's mouth. "Yes," he answers.
It hurts when Dean thrusts into him without prep or the gentling of lube. Sam presses his face against the ground and screams into the dirt, his fingers digging and scrabbling. Dean makes a noise, snarling and unidentifiable and pulls out, which hurts nearly as bad. Then Dean's prying him apart with rough hands and Sam struggles to pull away, right up to the point that Dean's tongue touches him, licking careful and gentle, delving inside and soothing away the pain. Dean keeps tonguing him, wet and slopping, until Sam is crying out for different reasons, his hips writhing in the soft soil.
It still hurts when Dean mounts him again, but not as bad, and after a moment, Dean shifts and angles for that place that he apparently remembers quite well, making Sam spasm and moan. "Dean..."
"Sammy," Dean says back and it sounds clearer, closer to right. "Oh...oh, fuck, Sammy."
"It's okay," Sam pants, trying to get his knees under him, his hands. "It's oh...okay. Just...Let's just finish it."
Dean sort of snarls again then, bending to bury his teeth in the back of Sam's neck, thrusting hard and deep and fast. Sam breathes in the rich, wet aroma of the dirt and them, the Lord of the Hunt and his Consort in the dying of the year.
Dean comes first, teeth gouging deeper in Sam's skin until the iron-copper tang of blood joins the other scents of their rut. He keeps thrusting, though and between that and the flooding of his come to better slick the way, it's not long before Sam is clenching and spurting into the ground beneath him which seems to sigh and open.
Dean slips out of him and rolls Sam onto his back. In his hand is a knife, a flash of bright in oceans of darkness. I'll get you out of this, Dean, he thinks. What he says, tipping his head back and baring his throat, is: "Do it."
Dean looks down at him for a long time, long enough for Sam to start shaking and his body want to curl in hurt and shock and fear. But he makes himself stay as still as he can, looking into his brother's eyes.
"Do it," he says again, lips numb.
Slowly, Dean shakes his head. "Not you, Sammy. Never you."
Dean draws the knife across his own throat, a gesture that looks fake until the darkness falls from his neck, wet and flooding gouts that stink of copper. Sam screams, hurtling up to put his hands around Dean's neck in a vain attempt to stop the blood-Jesus, so much blood, slick and vile, soaking and bubbling up through his fingers.
At once, the Court is there, around them. The Queen puts her hand on his shoulder, and some things take his arms, forcing him away from Dean gently but surely. "Don't you touch him!" Sam sob-screams, twisting in the grip of those that hold him, thin, tall creatures with the heads of owls. "Don't you fucking touch him! He's mine, damn you!"
The Queen ignores him, undoing the ties of her tunic with one hand and reaching with the other to gather a handful of blood from Dean's body. Dean gurgles, spasming weakly against the ground. The pine mast is like a snow angel, swept in great wings. The Queen parts the panels of the tunic to expose her breasts, her small, round belly. She presses her bloody palm to her navel, leaving a print of gore.
::Accepted:: she says and it rings like a bell to fill the whole world.
The host's lamps extinguish then, all at once, leaving Sam blind and he falls to the ground, suddenly released. Incoherent, he scrabbles sightlessly across the ground until he finds Dean, fumbling his way across his brother's body, still breathing, solid, there.
"Dean," he says, barely aware of his own voice. "Dean...God. Dean."
"Sam?" Dean asks suddenly, weak and grainy.
Sam lets out that breathless half-scream, half-sob again. His fingers search across Dean's neck, finding the thick, still-warm spill of Dean's blood but underneath the skin is whole, uncut. His pulse drums against Sam's fingers steady and regular. "Yeah?" Even that one syllable is almost too much, shaking wildly.
"Are we...are we cuddling? Are we cuddling?" Dean sounds outraged. "Dude, what the fuck, get off me." He pushes Sam but Sam refuses to go, using his height and extra fifty pounds of weight to stay unmoved.
"No," he says, now strangely calm even though a part of him feels drunk and high with giddy relief. Not dead, he thinks. Not dead. He decides he can worry about the rest of it-the host, the hunt, their clothes, the car, what it meant to choose Dean as his Consort-later. Tomorrow, even.
"That...wasn't a dream, was it?" Dean asks cautiously after a long silence, while Sam taps out the beat of Dean's heart against Dean's chest with two fingertips. Despite his disdain of cuddling, his arm curves around Sam and he pets the naked skin of Sam's spine which is remembering how to feel cold.
"No," Sam agrees mildly.
"Are...are you okay?" Dean's hand slides lower, slips between Sam's cheeks to touch.
Sam flinches and hisses, already sore, already swollen. But he says, "Yeah, I'm fine."
Dean curls up a little and Sam feels Dean's mouth brush the crown of his head. Then, when he falls back again: "Let's get the fuck out of here. Nowish."
There are things that should probably be talked about-all the messy issues of brothers who also fuck, Dean's fears of abandonment, Sam's all round fears. They don't know what the fuck they're doing and Sam's never been comfortable with going on blind faith, especially when it's faith in himself.
Knew you'd say that. Just a matter of time. Just...didn't think it'd be this soon.
Sam sighs and sits up, wincing as it aches. Dean sits with him and curls a hand around Sam's arm, just above his elbow. Sam smiles, even though Dean can't really see it. "Yeah," he answers. "Let's."
METAL GENERATES WATER
Dean doesn't listen to Sam's protests, his fingers stripping, searching, looking, until Sam is naked in the dim firelight. Even then, he doesn't trust his eyes, running his fingers over every inch of Sam's skin looking for breaks in that smooth, fragile surface, looking for the wetness or gritty scritch of blood.
It's only when he finally can admit there's nothing to find that Sam's voice comes to him, soft and puzzled, saying over and over again: "...I'm fine. Dean, it's okay; I'm fine."
"Yeah," Dean answers gruffly. Then, because his relief is unhinging his knees and spine, he leans his head against Sam's shoulder and breathes in the bitter wash of Sam's sweat and the smoke of their fires and the faint tang of graveyard dirt, wet and faintly moldy. Sam's arm goes around him, solid and steadying, holding Dean there. And then, because he's Dean and because he can feel Sam's breath racing fast and Sam's cock filling up hot and thick between them, he shifts his head a little bit and licks a stripe up his brother's throat, tongue slurring over the almost invisible stubble. "Yeah."
"I'm okay," Sam says again, breathless this time, and then he's pulling Dean's head back by his hair-which Dean doesn't like nearly as much as when the positions are reversed-and his mouth is covering Dean's.
Sammy tastes like metal. He suspects they both do-the steel of blade and gun and even shovel, the silver of their bullets and ritual implements, the iron of their blood, so often shed in the defense of others (but not tonight, not tonight). Neither of them is as impervious as steel or iron or even silver, though.
The reasons that all of this is a bad idea-a stupid idea-crawl up into Dean's mind again.
You've got to take steel into your heart, Dad said to him a long time ago, when Dean was still small enough to sit on his knee and Sam wasn't eating anything more solid than his own fist. His hand had covered up almost all of Dean's chest, then. Make your heart hard, strong. And then you can do what needs to be done.
Like kill the thing that hurt Mom? he'd asked then and Dad smiled. He remembers it because he thinks it must have been the first time he saw his dad smile after Mom died.
Yeah, kiddo. Exactly like that.
Sam's hands are on Dean's shirt now, unbuttoning, pushing, demanding. One of Dean's buttons tears away with a clatter in Sam's impatience. Then Sam's fingers are crawling up Dean's belly, zeroing in on his nipples; Sam likes how sensitive they are. Sam's aren't and he seems to compensate by playing with Dean's at every available opportunity. Or maybe he just likes the way it makes Dean shiver and moan, who the fuck knows? "Bed," Sam groans into Dean's ear as the callused pad of his thumb rasps over Dean's pebbled skin. "Fuck...Dean...bed. Or we fall down. Your choice."
Dean hesitates, his thumbs across Sam's carotid and jugular respectively, feeling that twin beat. The thing about Dad, about how he raised them, about how he thinks of them, about John Winchester himself is that he's a soldier, first and foremost. This is a war to him and in war, people die. Which is not to say that their Dad doesn't care. But at the same time, ever since Mom left them, Dean's had the sneaking suspicion that-though he'd be sorry and grieve and feel mad as hell and go and kick the righteous ass of whatever did it-if Dean or Sam died, it wouldn't be unexpected to him. It's not unthinkable, intolerable, impossible.
John Winchester is used to casualties.
And maybe he's doing his dad a disservice, he doesn't know. But ever since Dad left him, ever since a frantic call on the way to Kansas and a busted heart in some other shitsplat town he's doing his best to forget, Dean doesn't know how else to come to terms with it, that absence. He can't yet come to terms with this, either, bad enough when Sam was just his little bro, worse...well, just worse now.
"Dean?" Sam questions. He looks confused, he looks horny and the combination sort of futzes out Dean's higher brain function. All these years and he never noticed how fucking sexy Sam looks, especially when Dean's been sucking on his bottom lip and it's all plumped up and dark. Then his gaze slides lower and he sees the bruises, coloring in fast. He'd had to cut the ghul's fingers off one by one, each of them reprinted in dead blood across his brother's throat. They were only lucky Sam's turtleneck had protected him from both strangling and the filth of their touch.
Unthinkable. Intolerable. Impossible.
Dean leans his head against Sam's shoulder again, hiding his face and hoping that hides it all.
"Dean?" Sam says again and now he sounds worried. "Are..." His arm snakes under the back of Dean's shirt, his palm flattens between Dean's shoulder blades. "Are you crying?"
"Fuck you, I'm crying," Except that it doesn't come out all snappy and sharp like he wants it too. His voice cracks halfway through and he can't quite bring it back under control.
Take steel into your heart, Dad said, that intent, earnest look in his eyes that he got when he was telling Dean something important, something huge.
"And if I am, it's only because you stink so bad."
"I do reek pretty bad," Sam agrees cautiously and Dean belts him one in the ribs. "Ow! What was that for?"
"For being a smartass and patronizing me," Dean growls, still not lifting his head.
"Dude. Did you just use a word of more than two syllables?"
"Oh, bitch." Dean grabs Sam by the wrist and the back of the neck and pivots them, sweeping Sam's leg and tumbling them both down onto the cheap cabin carpet. Sam grins at him and then wraps one of his freakishly long arms around Dean's neck and one leg around Dean's hip, shoving and wriggling until he's got Dean on his back. Well, there's no way Dean's going to put up with that kind of shit, so it's kind of a wrestling match all over the room.
Dean hits his kidney against the bed frame. Sam almost tips the dinette over on them both. Sam's giggling like a drunk sorority girl, which Dean just finds...hilarious and then they're too hot and sweating and still fucking rank as hell and they sprawl out on their backs panting and laughing
Dean stops laughing when Sam puts a hand high on his thigh, kneading gently. "Hey," Sam says and the giggles are gone, replaced by a deep huskiness that makes Dean shiver.
Take steel into your heart.
Dean opens his mouth to say something; something like, "Hey, maybe we shouldn't do this anymore," when Sam rolls over and wraps his mouth around Dean's half-hard cock too fast for Dean to even get what's going on. Dean makes some noise he can't classify and doesn't care to and his hips lift up off the floor like he's been shot.
Sam gags a little before curling his other hand around Dean's hip and pushing him back down. "Dean," he says, pulling off and breathing hard. "I know I'm a big guy and all, but you can't just ram it down my throat like that. This isn't a porno, man; I'll choke."
"Um," Dean says, because it's possible that he doesn't have full brain function back yet. "Yeah. Heh. Sorry."
Sam's fingers feather against Dean's hip, soothing and reassuring at the same time. He smiles and then drags his lips slowly over the head of Dean's cock. "I'm okay, Dean," he says yet again. "We're both okay."
Dean rolls his eyes and then rolls his hips, slower and gentler this time, Sam humming around him. "Jeez, Sam, I got it."
Sam plants both his hands on Dean's hips then, as if to hold him in place, his thumb caressing Dean's cock with light, feathery touches. "I get you're scared, Dean," Sam says, and when Dean groans and tries to twist away, Sam just leans a little harder and Dean goes nowhere. "I'm scared."
"Yeah, we'll you've always been kind of a punk, Sammy, hate to break it to you," Dean says, flinging one arm over his eyes so at least he doesn't have to watch this travesty of a blow-job. "Now can we get back to the dick-sucking part? That part was...fun."
Sam laughs and it vibrates through Dean's whole body.
Dean's tried really hard his whole life to be his father's son, a man his father could be proud of, a man he could be proud of, like his father. But he knows his father-their father-wouldn't be proud of this. And he knows, for as much as he wants to be the perfect soldier his dad wants him to be, he's not. He's not John Winchester and neither is Sam.
And that just has to be okay.
Because the alternative is unthinkable, intolerable, impossible.
part two
Remix Author: poisontaster
Original Story: Elementum Res. Progressus
Original Author: maygra
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Warnings: Language, sex, m/m incest, violence, torture, mentions of rape.
AN: Whereas Western thought developed the idea of elements as substances, and Indian thought as emanations, Chinese philosophy conceived of the five elements, or Wu Xing, as dynamic states of change.
FIRE GENERATES EARTH
Begin at the beginning.
Except there are lots of beginnings. As the pieces of their past are consumed and burned to ash behind them, they have to start again, anew, find work-arounds for damaged tissues, invent things from whole cloth because the alternative is unthinkable.
This is a beginning: A screaming baby is pushed into the arms of a boy almost too small to hold him. "Take your brother outside and don't look back. Now, Dean, go!"
This is another: "Dad's on a hunting trip...and he hasn't been home in a few days."
Mostly he's stopped counting the times he's picked himself up and gone on from the broken eggshell of a past life. He manipulates his façade through hundreds of names and cities and holds secret the fragile pilot light at his core. He rises like a phoenix and never looks back longer than he has to in order to see what's chasing him.
Because something always is.
Being with Sam again doesn't feel like a beginning no matter how much he wants it to be, which is maybe how it catches him off-guard. Sometimes these things can only be seen in retrospect.
Like, for example, and just say...maybe ducking into both Sam's line of fire and the reach of a werewolf's claws to shove the muzzle of your shotgun under its chin and blow its brains out may not be the smartest thing you've ever done.
What? It worked, right?
And the thing had pissed him off.
But that's not good enough for Sam, oh no, growling all the way back to the motel like he's the beast here and throwing around words like stupid and could've been killed and kill you myself.
And really, that's all he thinks it is-Sammy blowing off some steam and adrenaline-until Sam's knotting his monkey paws into the front of Dean's shirt and slamming him hard up against the wall, screaming, "Goddamn it, Dean! Goddamn it!"
Ow. Why is it always the wall?
And then he realizes: oh. This is serious.
So he sort of pets Sam on the shoulder, clumsily, because Sam's still got him in that death grip and he's sort of up on tiptoes and he says, "It's cool, Sam." See how he was careful to say Sam? "Everything's c...."
But he can see from Sam's eyes that it's not cool, it's not cool at all, and Sam gives this kind of hysterical half-laugh, dragging Dean away from the wall only to shove him back into the plaster again until he thinks there's going to be a Dean-shaped print in the wall-ow-and then, and then, he's kissing Dean-like...kissing him-and Dean thinks: oh. This is serious.
But that's pretty close to the time where thinking just about finishes up because Dean's kissing Sam back and it's just like their arguing, all heat and demand and the utter inability to give or back the fuck down, translated to a new form
A new art form, shit, because Sammy's a lot better at this kissing thing than he is at arguing. And Sam was going to be a lawyer; he pretty much had that arguing thing down pat.
Dean doesn't even realize he's hard, though, until Sam's fingers fumble across his erection straining at the front of his pants, clumsy and groping and then it's almost all he can focus on: Sam and this; him and Sam.
Sam jokes with Dean about his lack of education but they both know bored isn't the same as stupid. Dean always liked practical classes, sciences, math, shop, even his brief but memorable stint with Home Ec. Dean likes the Big Bang Theory. Not the same way he did when he was twelve, sniggering behind his hand...okay, maybe still a little like that. But there's something fundamental there that appeals to him, over and above his not so well hidden pyromaniacal tendencies. The idea that the world starts in fire, a clash that should be-could be-cataclysmic but instead is the start of everything. The idea of all these pieces, waiting, and then slagged by fire into something more than they were before.
He can't rightly say if these pieces of himself and Sam were always waiting for this. He's not the guy for that kind of navel gazing; if that's what you're looking for, you need to look to the guy underneath him, writhing and cursing in a thick, smoky voice Dean hardly recognizes. (Stupid, Sam says, dragging his head, his mouth down again and snarling against Dean's lips. Such a fucking asshole...yeah, yeah like that...oh. Oh, fuck...) But if they were, those pieces, they had to have been like that universe-in-waiting, tiny as dust particles and easily overlooked, because Dean never saw them, even though they seem so obvious now.
Dean listens to the ragged sob of Sam's breath as he licks and gnaws the searing skin of Sam's throat, leaving the imprint of himself on Sam's surface instead of allowing it to sink deep where he can't see it anymore. Sam's ragged, bitten nails leave gouges of their own in Dean's skin but it's not the first or last time that Sam's made him bleed and it's better than most of them.
Once, after Sam left but before Dad did, Dad sent Dean down to Mexico on a job. Having even less desire to end up in the Mexican jail system than the American one, he'd elected to camp out in the dry, dusty hills. The second morning, he'd woken unexpectedly early and had been sitting quiet, drinking down one of the bottles of water he'd brought with him when he saw... Well. He doesn't rightfully know what it was, never having seen anything like it before or since. Never really having even heard of anything like it except in story books, but if he had to call it something, he'd call it a dragon. A real live dragon.
Not that it had looked like any of the pictures from those books. It was tabbied in the different colors of sand and earth, sort of like a gecko and bristled with curving spikes that looked oddly delicate at this distance but Dean bets they'd go through a man like a needle. It moved like a lizard too, quick, mincing steps on flexible black toes. Every few yards, it would stop, kind of shudder like it was about to sneeze and was momentarily engulfed in a blue haze of ball lightning. After the third or fourth time, Dean thought wonderingly, it's bleeding off; grounding off excess charge into the flat, pebbled and arid ground until it was just an amazingly large lizard.
And if Dean has to think about it-and he's got to think about something because for someone who's never had a cock in his mouth, Sam is disturbingly good at this and Dean's going to blow his wad like a kid on his first fuck if he's not careful-he reckons that this might be like that dragon.
That there's this whole secret to Sam that no one but him has ever seen and no one but him has ever got and a whole lifetime could go back and no one else ever would.
And that it would be real easy-especially in their line of work-for one of them to just...burn up or burn out or explode under the pressure without the other one to hold them down, to take that excess energy and bleed it away so that they're safe again, hidden again.
And his last thought isn't real clear, even at the time; if he had to mold it into something resembling words, being Dean, it would probably come out something like this:
Yeah. Okay.
EARTH GENERATES METAL
Sam's felt restless in his skin all day.
Skin too tight, blood rushing too fast...jittery. Nervy. He feels as though, if something doesn't happen soon, he's going to explode from internal pressure.
Dean, as usual, seems oblivious, humming happily under his breath as they tramp through last year's leaves. If they weren't tracking, he'd probably whistle as well, or maybe sing.
It's almost time for this year's leaves to start dropping; Sam can see some of them are already starting to turn, gold, scarlet and orange, shocking blurts of color in the restless fields of dulling green and brown. Sam tells himself that his edginess is because of these woods, old and stately and alien in the way all trees old enough to truly remember are. He tells himself it's because he's a city boy at heart, beloved of those places where books and soap and music can be had for the asking. But the truth is he and Jess spent hours and days hiking through California's redwood forests and he never felt like this, uneasy and nervous.
So maybe it's just that you're fucking your brother, his mind supplies unexpectedly and Sam bites down on semi-hysterical laughter, though not soon enough to keep Dean from giving him one of Those Looks.
"S'nothing," Sam says, his voice shaking with the effort of not laughing. "Brain fart."
Dean's eyebrows lift up another millimeter or so, but he just says, "Least those stink less than the ones you were laying down last night. No more onions for you, Sammy my boy."
And so Sam punches him one and then Dean tackles him. Sam goes down in a tangle of knees and elbows and then it's just like every other episode of the Sam and Dean Traveling Sideshow...at least until Dean moves wrong, or Sam does-and by that he means the right way-and suddenly Sam's sporting wood like one of the mighty oaks around them.
They freeze. Dean's face, his eyes, look shocked and somehow very young, almost scared, as if Sam's caught him doing something wrong. They're not used to this, Sam realizes, either of them. They haven't overwritten the habits of years as siblings with the new history of lovers and the lines are blurry and weird.
Then Dean's face closes like a wound scabbing over and he writhes his hips against Sam's, deliberate. Once. Twice.
Sam makes a whining sound deep in his throat, the thrum in his blood, the enthusiastic excitement of his dick bringing him up to meet Dean. Then: "Get off me, you whore." Sam shoves Dean's shoulders, shoving Dean off him and it's not quite as weird.
"Aw, c'mon, Sammy," Dean protests, even though he's already getting to his feet. He holds out his hand and snags Sam's wrist, hauling him upright like he's still twelve and gangling. Quick-fast Dean's other hand cups over Sam's cock, the heel grinding pleasure-painful against the shaft. "Sure you don't want some help with that little problem?"
"Yeah, how about some time when we're not in the middle of the haunted woods?" Sam says, tugging vainly at the crotch of his jeans to find some configuration where they don't abrade or tease his sensitized flesh. "And it's not so little, jerkass. As you well know."
"You have no spirit of adventure," Dean says loftily but he's already turning away. He's humming again, atonal and unrecognized, fingers tapping out a drum beat against his thigh as he raises his head like he's scenting the wind.
It's like a catalyst, though. Suddenly the sex is between them again and Sam is distracted by the pressure of his cock-which will not deflate no matter how many unsexy thoughts he forces through his mind-and in some kind of perverse torture, even his ass feels delicate and engorged, almost wet, as if just begging him to take Dean up on his offer.
Or offers, because suddenly Dean also seems as equally interested in Sam's ass as he is in the hunt, taking every opportunity to proposition him-usually with the worst lame-ass come-on lines-or 'accidentally' brush against him or fondle him until finally-and most unnervingly of all-Dean holds Sam pressed immobile against one of the trees while he ruts against Sam's back, teeth grazing the nape of Sam's neck and his nose snuffling in the thick clump of Sam's hair.
"Dean," he says, shaky and a little scared and a lot turned on, as Dean's hand creeps around his hip to pull him back more firmly against Dean's cock. "Dean, wait, please... Something's wrong."
"Smell so good," Dean growls, thrusting against Sam again, grinding Sam into the bark until he worries about it being printed in his skin. "So good. Why won't you let me fuck you, Sammy? Thought we were doing that now, fucking."
"Not like this." Sam wriggles, trying to find the leverage to push back, but it's useless. Dean's got his legs spread too wide, is pressed too tight against him. "Dammit, Dean, can't you feel it? Something's wrong. Something's wrong with us."
Dean lets go of him so fast that Sam falls backwards on his butt, cushioned only by the spongy layer of leaves and pine mast. It aches deep in his ass and in his cock and he can only stare up at the look on Dean's face, shocked, a frisson of cold winding in and out of his spine and nerve endings. Five years ago, when he first saw that look, he hadn't known what it meant-what was hiding behind it. When he'd left Dad and Dean for school, he hadn't seen-understood-how his going would rip Dean to pieces, the way he hadn't seen a lot of things about Dean...or himself, for that matter. Time-and sharing a bed-has changed a lot of that.
"Knew you'd say that," Dean says in the same growly-dull voice. Sam wants to leap up, pin Dean against the same tree and kiss and mouth and hump against him until the closed, stormy look on Dean's face gives way and they can go back to horny and happy and teasing, but he can't move, frozen on his palms and haunches, his heart beating too fast in his throat. "Just a matter of time. Just...didn't think it'd be this soon."
Dean turns his back. Sam divines Dean's intention a second too late, finally broken out of his paralysis to scramble to his feet, saying, "Wait, Dean-that's not what I meant..." as Dean takes off running.
By the time Sam gets all the way up, his brother is gone.
"Fuck!" Sam shouts at the top of his lungs, not caring if the ghosts or whatever haunts these woods hears him.
It takes him three hours to backtrack to the Impala, casting around for any sign of Dean the whole way. Even more stupidly, his cock still rides at half-mast, throbbing and persistent, and he wonders if someone slipped them a roofie or Viagra or something. The whole front of his shorts feels clammy and disgusting.
The Impala's still there, gleaming darkly in the westering sunlight, but Dean is not. Sam curses a lot, both aloud and under his breath, and then picks the locks to open the hood. He pulls a handful of spark plugs and the starter coil-not that he really thinks Dean would leave him, but better safe than sorry, and let's hope they don't need to leave in a hurry-and then goes around to the trunk to find a clean (or not too dirty) pair of boxers.
He strips quickly, paranoid about hikers-though they haven't seen any so far-and alternately worried about, horny for and irritated with Dean. He's stepping into the new boxers-dick more than half-hard now and bobbing distractingly against his belly-and scanning the woods watchfully when he spots Dean.
Dean's standing just inside the starting fringe of trees, half-obscured by screening second-growth foliage. Something's wrong with the picture but Sam can't quite place it as he takes a half step in Dean's direction. "Dean!"
Dean grins at him, frank and appreciative, and Sam remembers he's still dick out, only half in his shorts. Blushing across what feels like his whole body, Sam fumbles to drag his other leg into his underwear while hop-hobbling towards his brother. "Dean!"
Sam steps on a twig sharply with his socked foot and stumbles, hands and one knee smacking into the thick soil. By the time he wrenches up his head again, Dean's gone. "Dean! Dammit. Dean!"
Horns. That's what it was, what was wrong with the way Dean had looked; tiny, nubby little buttons of brown horn pushing out from his skin. Fucking horns.
He takes off after Dean, afraid he'll lose him again. The sun's going down and the woods are huge; in the dark, he'll never find him. Whipcord thin branches and razor-edged leaves cut Sam's unprotected legs and he thinks about going back for his jeans and boots but the fear-inarticulate but dire-is stronger and so he keeps churning forward, steeled against everything except the singular thought of losing Dean.
Once he's through the scrubby border, the forest opens around him again, the light already faded and thick with shadow. Sam bites down on panic and makes himself concentrate on the ground beneath his feet. The detritus of leaves and soft pine scuffed off to his left gives him direction.
Several yards later, his socked foot tangles in something soft; Dean's shirt, the sleeves turned inside out. Not long after that, Dean's tee-shirt, reeking of Dean like he's been wearing it for days. The smell of it makes Sam groan and his cock thicken, every step after that an exercise in absurdity and agony that would make him cry if he wasn't so freaked out.
He's standing by a tree that's been liberally drenched in what he assumes is Dean's piss-nice one, Dean-o, toilet trained much?-when he realizes he hears music. When he realizes it's the same music Dean's been humming all day. And suddenly, it just clicks, all the pieces coming together in his mind.
Oh, fuck me, Sam thinks. How could we have been so stupid?
They've gathered in one of the clearings when Sam comes upon them. It's almost full dark and he can't see them all, even with the ur-light of their lamps and torches. It doesn't feel like many, though plenty enough to be dangerous to him-to them-and Sam wonders if there's many of them even left, driven further and deeper and out.
The King sits in shadow and is only a shape, an impression of enormous, broad shoulders and phosphorescent eyes and the horns, larger than Dean's, branching again and again until they seem almost like a tree themselves. The Queen sits in the pool of what light there is and it's she that draws his attention, because she's the one who has Dean at her feet, a leash of what looks like oak leaves and vines clasped around Dean's neck and held in her small, brown hand.
Sam can't help the growl that builds in his chest, the hot, tense feeling in his chest. "Mine," he snarls and the host rumbles and hisses its disapproval.
The Queen is tiny but not in the least fragile and Sam has no doubt she can hurt either one of them, kill them, if she so chooses. But she only blinks owlish white eyes at him and tilts her head. ::Mine:: she replies. ::My Hunt. My Hunter.:: She looks down at Dean and runs strangely long fingers over Dean's bare shoulder, making him shudder and sway in her direction. ::Good Hunter::
She talks half in Sam's mind, pictures and feelings in a loose frame of words, barely contained. In her words Sam glimpses other Hunts, other Hunters, culled from other wanderers in these woods, hapless hikers and lonely wanderers. Of course none of them had been good as Dean, smooth and thick muscled, nearly naked now except for...are those leaves? Oh, man, he wishes he had his camera; Dean's never hearing the end of this one... Except that assumes either one of them is getting out of this one.
"Dean," he says, willing his brother to hear him, to recognize him. "Dean."
Dean looks up and across at him and his eyes seem like they glow in the dimness, his freckles like spots of ink across his face and shoulders. Sam remembers his fingers digging into those shoulders, gasping, begging; remembers smoothing his thumbs across those high-planed cheeks and Dean ducking away, ashamed.
"Dean," he says again and something crosses his brother's eyes. Dean moves a couple hopping steps towards him, enough that Sam can see Dean's cock, hard and dark, jutting up and curving into his belly. Dean sniffs toward Sam and his tongue creeps out to outline his mouth in wetness, dark rose against candy pink.
"Mine," Sam says again, more confident this time. "My Hunter. Mine."
The Queen comes down from her throne of twisted, age-silvered oak and takes small mincing steps towards him, Dean shambling in her wake. Sam fights not to flinch, fights harder not to snatch the leash from her hands.
She touches him and her fingers are cold, hard, like wood. Dean snuffles at Sam's fingers and Sam buries them in Dean's hair. Her eyes are different when she pulls back and he can see them again; no less cold or inhuman, but somehow sad, somehow understanding. ::Consort?:: she asks and Sam understands it's an offer as much as a question.
Sam looks at Dean, whose face tips up to him, the green in his eyes brightened to sunlight through a spring leaf. Sam's breath goes out of him and he ghosts his fingertips over the velvety knurls of Dean's horns, not yet budded. Yes.
The Queen nods as if she heard his silent assent and steps away from him, jerking Dean with her. Dean goes reluctantly, straying back towards Sam as Sam suffers the host to surround him, strip him of his remaining clothes and daub his skin in cold mud and scalding hot blood, wind leaves into his hair. He doesn't look at them. He looks at Dean.
::Consort?:: the Queen asks again, inquiringly. He sees in her mind the echo of past rites, past hunts. This can only end one way.
"Yes," Sam says again, this time aloud. His eyes still don't stray from Dean who looks back at him with narrowed eyes.
::Go, then:: she says. ::Run. Run::
And then he is running. The forest passes him in a blur of darkness and he is afraid though his blood runs hot and high. He understands that the longer he evades the hunt, the longer it takes to catch him, the better the rite. He understands too what will happen when Dean catches him. He is afraid.
He doesn't know how long he runs, chased by shadow and the belling echoes of Dean and the host. Long enough to feel like it's always only been this-being chased, being prey. Long enough for his heart to feel too big, slamming too hard against enclosing ribs. Long enough for his legs to ache and throb, echoed in his still unrepentantly hard cock.
It's almost a relief when Dean tackles him.
Sam hits, chest and flailing arm and then chin and the side of his face, sliding in the dry drifts of leaves and bracken. Dean shoves his face into the side of Sam's neck, sniffing, grunting, the thick length of his cock riding between the cheeks of Sam's ass.
"Mine," Dean growls, barely sounding human. His teeth scrape Sam's skin, followed by the wet heat of his tongue. "Sammy. My Sammy. Mine."
Sam could sob at the sound of his name from Dean's mouth. "Yes," he answers.
It hurts when Dean thrusts into him without prep or the gentling of lube. Sam presses his face against the ground and screams into the dirt, his fingers digging and scrabbling. Dean makes a noise, snarling and unidentifiable and pulls out, which hurts nearly as bad. Then Dean's prying him apart with rough hands and Sam struggles to pull away, right up to the point that Dean's tongue touches him, licking careful and gentle, delving inside and soothing away the pain. Dean keeps tonguing him, wet and slopping, until Sam is crying out for different reasons, his hips writhing in the soft soil.
It still hurts when Dean mounts him again, but not as bad, and after a moment, Dean shifts and angles for that place that he apparently remembers quite well, making Sam spasm and moan. "Dean..."
"Sammy," Dean says back and it sounds clearer, closer to right. "Oh...oh, fuck, Sammy."
"It's okay," Sam pants, trying to get his knees under him, his hands. "It's oh...okay. Just...Let's just finish it."
Dean sort of snarls again then, bending to bury his teeth in the back of Sam's neck, thrusting hard and deep and fast. Sam breathes in the rich, wet aroma of the dirt and them, the Lord of the Hunt and his Consort in the dying of the year.
Dean comes first, teeth gouging deeper in Sam's skin until the iron-copper tang of blood joins the other scents of their rut. He keeps thrusting, though and between that and the flooding of his come to better slick the way, it's not long before Sam is clenching and spurting into the ground beneath him which seems to sigh and open.
Dean slips out of him and rolls Sam onto his back. In his hand is a knife, a flash of bright in oceans of darkness. I'll get you out of this, Dean, he thinks. What he says, tipping his head back and baring his throat, is: "Do it."
Dean looks down at him for a long time, long enough for Sam to start shaking and his body want to curl in hurt and shock and fear. But he makes himself stay as still as he can, looking into his brother's eyes.
"Do it," he says again, lips numb.
Slowly, Dean shakes his head. "Not you, Sammy. Never you."
Dean draws the knife across his own throat, a gesture that looks fake until the darkness falls from his neck, wet and flooding gouts that stink of copper. Sam screams, hurtling up to put his hands around Dean's neck in a vain attempt to stop the blood-Jesus, so much blood, slick and vile, soaking and bubbling up through his fingers.
At once, the Court is there, around them. The Queen puts her hand on his shoulder, and some things take his arms, forcing him away from Dean gently but surely. "Don't you touch him!" Sam sob-screams, twisting in the grip of those that hold him, thin, tall creatures with the heads of owls. "Don't you fucking touch him! He's mine, damn you!"
The Queen ignores him, undoing the ties of her tunic with one hand and reaching with the other to gather a handful of blood from Dean's body. Dean gurgles, spasming weakly against the ground. The pine mast is like a snow angel, swept in great wings. The Queen parts the panels of the tunic to expose her breasts, her small, round belly. She presses her bloody palm to her navel, leaving a print of gore.
::Accepted:: she says and it rings like a bell to fill the whole world.
The host's lamps extinguish then, all at once, leaving Sam blind and he falls to the ground, suddenly released. Incoherent, he scrabbles sightlessly across the ground until he finds Dean, fumbling his way across his brother's body, still breathing, solid, there.
"Dean," he says, barely aware of his own voice. "Dean...God. Dean."
"Sam?" Dean asks suddenly, weak and grainy.
Sam lets out that breathless half-scream, half-sob again. His fingers search across Dean's neck, finding the thick, still-warm spill of Dean's blood but underneath the skin is whole, uncut. His pulse drums against Sam's fingers steady and regular. "Yeah?" Even that one syllable is almost too much, shaking wildly.
"Are we...are we cuddling? Are we cuddling?" Dean sounds outraged. "Dude, what the fuck, get off me." He pushes Sam but Sam refuses to go, using his height and extra fifty pounds of weight to stay unmoved.
"No," he says, now strangely calm even though a part of him feels drunk and high with giddy relief. Not dead, he thinks. Not dead. He decides he can worry about the rest of it-the host, the hunt, their clothes, the car, what it meant to choose Dean as his Consort-later. Tomorrow, even.
"That...wasn't a dream, was it?" Dean asks cautiously after a long silence, while Sam taps out the beat of Dean's heart against Dean's chest with two fingertips. Despite his disdain of cuddling, his arm curves around Sam and he pets the naked skin of Sam's spine which is remembering how to feel cold.
"No," Sam agrees mildly.
"Are...are you okay?" Dean's hand slides lower, slips between Sam's cheeks to touch.
Sam flinches and hisses, already sore, already swollen. But he says, "Yeah, I'm fine."
Dean curls up a little and Sam feels Dean's mouth brush the crown of his head. Then, when he falls back again: "Let's get the fuck out of here. Nowish."
There are things that should probably be talked about-all the messy issues of brothers who also fuck, Dean's fears of abandonment, Sam's all round fears. They don't know what the fuck they're doing and Sam's never been comfortable with going on blind faith, especially when it's faith in himself.
Knew you'd say that. Just a matter of time. Just...didn't think it'd be this soon.
Sam sighs and sits up, wincing as it aches. Dean sits with him and curls a hand around Sam's arm, just above his elbow. Sam smiles, even though Dean can't really see it. "Yeah," he answers. "Let's."
METAL GENERATES WATER
Dean doesn't listen to Sam's protests, his fingers stripping, searching, looking, until Sam is naked in the dim firelight. Even then, he doesn't trust his eyes, running his fingers over every inch of Sam's skin looking for breaks in that smooth, fragile surface, looking for the wetness or gritty scritch of blood.
It's only when he finally can admit there's nothing to find that Sam's voice comes to him, soft and puzzled, saying over and over again: "...I'm fine. Dean, it's okay; I'm fine."
"Yeah," Dean answers gruffly. Then, because his relief is unhinging his knees and spine, he leans his head against Sam's shoulder and breathes in the bitter wash of Sam's sweat and the smoke of their fires and the faint tang of graveyard dirt, wet and faintly moldy. Sam's arm goes around him, solid and steadying, holding Dean there. And then, because he's Dean and because he can feel Sam's breath racing fast and Sam's cock filling up hot and thick between them, he shifts his head a little bit and licks a stripe up his brother's throat, tongue slurring over the almost invisible stubble. "Yeah."
"I'm okay," Sam says again, breathless this time, and then he's pulling Dean's head back by his hair-which Dean doesn't like nearly as much as when the positions are reversed-and his mouth is covering Dean's.
Sammy tastes like metal. He suspects they both do-the steel of blade and gun and even shovel, the silver of their bullets and ritual implements, the iron of their blood, so often shed in the defense of others (but not tonight, not tonight). Neither of them is as impervious as steel or iron or even silver, though.
The reasons that all of this is a bad idea-a stupid idea-crawl up into Dean's mind again.
You've got to take steel into your heart, Dad said to him a long time ago, when Dean was still small enough to sit on his knee and Sam wasn't eating anything more solid than his own fist. His hand had covered up almost all of Dean's chest, then. Make your heart hard, strong. And then you can do what needs to be done.
Like kill the thing that hurt Mom? he'd asked then and Dad smiled. He remembers it because he thinks it must have been the first time he saw his dad smile after Mom died.
Yeah, kiddo. Exactly like that.
Sam's hands are on Dean's shirt now, unbuttoning, pushing, demanding. One of Dean's buttons tears away with a clatter in Sam's impatience. Then Sam's fingers are crawling up Dean's belly, zeroing in on his nipples; Sam likes how sensitive they are. Sam's aren't and he seems to compensate by playing with Dean's at every available opportunity. Or maybe he just likes the way it makes Dean shiver and moan, who the fuck knows? "Bed," Sam groans into Dean's ear as the callused pad of his thumb rasps over Dean's pebbled skin. "Fuck...Dean...bed. Or we fall down. Your choice."
Dean hesitates, his thumbs across Sam's carotid and jugular respectively, feeling that twin beat. The thing about Dad, about how he raised them, about how he thinks of them, about John Winchester himself is that he's a soldier, first and foremost. This is a war to him and in war, people die. Which is not to say that their Dad doesn't care. But at the same time, ever since Mom left them, Dean's had the sneaking suspicion that-though he'd be sorry and grieve and feel mad as hell and go and kick the righteous ass of whatever did it-if Dean or Sam died, it wouldn't be unexpected to him. It's not unthinkable, intolerable, impossible.
John Winchester is used to casualties.
And maybe he's doing his dad a disservice, he doesn't know. But ever since Dad left him, ever since a frantic call on the way to Kansas and a busted heart in some other shitsplat town he's doing his best to forget, Dean doesn't know how else to come to terms with it, that absence. He can't yet come to terms with this, either, bad enough when Sam was just his little bro, worse...well, just worse now.
"Dean?" Sam questions. He looks confused, he looks horny and the combination sort of futzes out Dean's higher brain function. All these years and he never noticed how fucking sexy Sam looks, especially when Dean's been sucking on his bottom lip and it's all plumped up and dark. Then his gaze slides lower and he sees the bruises, coloring in fast. He'd had to cut the ghul's fingers off one by one, each of them reprinted in dead blood across his brother's throat. They were only lucky Sam's turtleneck had protected him from both strangling and the filth of their touch.
Unthinkable. Intolerable. Impossible.
Dean leans his head against Sam's shoulder again, hiding his face and hoping that hides it all.
"Dean?" Sam says again and now he sounds worried. "Are..." His arm snakes under the back of Dean's shirt, his palm flattens between Dean's shoulder blades. "Are you crying?"
"Fuck you, I'm crying," Except that it doesn't come out all snappy and sharp like he wants it too. His voice cracks halfway through and he can't quite bring it back under control.
Take steel into your heart, Dad said, that intent, earnest look in his eyes that he got when he was telling Dean something important, something huge.
"And if I am, it's only because you stink so bad."
"I do reek pretty bad," Sam agrees cautiously and Dean belts him one in the ribs. "Ow! What was that for?"
"For being a smartass and patronizing me," Dean growls, still not lifting his head.
"Dude. Did you just use a word of more than two syllables?"
"Oh, bitch." Dean grabs Sam by the wrist and the back of the neck and pivots them, sweeping Sam's leg and tumbling them both down onto the cheap cabin carpet. Sam grins at him and then wraps one of his freakishly long arms around Dean's neck and one leg around Dean's hip, shoving and wriggling until he's got Dean on his back. Well, there's no way Dean's going to put up with that kind of shit, so it's kind of a wrestling match all over the room.
Dean hits his kidney against the bed frame. Sam almost tips the dinette over on them both. Sam's giggling like a drunk sorority girl, which Dean just finds...hilarious and then they're too hot and sweating and still fucking rank as hell and they sprawl out on their backs panting and laughing
Dean stops laughing when Sam puts a hand high on his thigh, kneading gently. "Hey," Sam says and the giggles are gone, replaced by a deep huskiness that makes Dean shiver.
Take steel into your heart.
Dean opens his mouth to say something; something like, "Hey, maybe we shouldn't do this anymore," when Sam rolls over and wraps his mouth around Dean's half-hard cock too fast for Dean to even get what's going on. Dean makes some noise he can't classify and doesn't care to and his hips lift up off the floor like he's been shot.
Sam gags a little before curling his other hand around Dean's hip and pushing him back down. "Dean," he says, pulling off and breathing hard. "I know I'm a big guy and all, but you can't just ram it down my throat like that. This isn't a porno, man; I'll choke."
"Um," Dean says, because it's possible that he doesn't have full brain function back yet. "Yeah. Heh. Sorry."
Sam's fingers feather against Dean's hip, soothing and reassuring at the same time. He smiles and then drags his lips slowly over the head of Dean's cock. "I'm okay, Dean," he says yet again. "We're both okay."
Dean rolls his eyes and then rolls his hips, slower and gentler this time, Sam humming around him. "Jeez, Sam, I got it."
Sam plants both his hands on Dean's hips then, as if to hold him in place, his thumb caressing Dean's cock with light, feathery touches. "I get you're scared, Dean," Sam says, and when Dean groans and tries to twist away, Sam just leans a little harder and Dean goes nowhere. "I'm scared."
"Yeah, we'll you've always been kind of a punk, Sammy, hate to break it to you," Dean says, flinging one arm over his eyes so at least he doesn't have to watch this travesty of a blow-job. "Now can we get back to the dick-sucking part? That part was...fun."
Sam laughs and it vibrates through Dean's whole body.
Dean's tried really hard his whole life to be his father's son, a man his father could be proud of, a man he could be proud of, like his father. But he knows his father-their father-wouldn't be proud of this. And he knows, for as much as he wants to be the perfect soldier his dad wants him to be, he's not. He's not John Winchester and neither is Sam.
And that just has to be okay.
Because the alternative is unthinkable, intolerable, impossible.
part two