Demons Made Me Spill My Guts Like a Girl (1/3) - R - Sam/Dean
I would like to preface EVERYTHING by saying that when I got into SPN, I never ever in my entire life imagined my first fic would be Wincest. I mean, really. I didn't even read it up until a couple of weeks ago. *shrugs* Room in the handbasket for one more?
Title: Demons Made Me Spill My Guts Like a Girl
Author: Merrin/walkawayslowly
Pairings/Characters: Sam/Dean, mentions of almost every minor (and not so minor) character from the beginning of the series on
Rating: R for violence, sex, and other squickiness
Summary: Dean gets possessed. Violence and angst ensue from there. (Or, the secrets he keeps will kill him someday.)
Word Count: ~20,000
Feedback: Makes the world go round. Especially concrit.
Warnings: Angst, angst, and more angst piled on top of angst wrapped with a bow of angst and did I mention angst? Minor character death all over the place. (One or two could be construed as major, but neither one of THE MAJOR characters die, if you catch my heavy spoilerific drift.) There’s some psychological torture, a bit of physical torture(ish) so if that’s not your bag, I’d skip this. I’d also skip this if you’re looking for sweetness and light and rainbows and puppies. There is, also, quite a bit of schmoop towards the end, as I don’t know how to not be schmoopy.
Notes: (Which, oddly enough, sound like a freaking Oscar acceptance speech, OMG. Sorry!) God, I wish I knew where all this angst came from. I’m really a happy person, I swear! gwentastic came up with the original story, I kept going in and making it darker than it had been originally so if you leave this experience permanently scarred, it’s probably my fault. (Although, it was A LOT darker at one point, but I'm a big fluffy chicken.) If you leave it thinking “wow, what a crazy good story,” that’s probably her fault. Huge thanks and a big sloppy kiss go out to her also for letting me natter on to her about the story, and for being such an awesome plot hole plugger. (Which, coincidentally, sounds vaguely naughty.) She also beta’d it, so thanks to her for that as well. nemoinis has beta’d every freaking thing I’ve written from the dawn of time and she’s gotten past the point where she’s nice about it but she brings the beta-fu so it’s hard to mind. She's brutal and I love every second of it. incredulity let me read it to her in parts over the phone and cried in all the appropriate places and if you can't love making your friends cry, what can you love? misskittye checked it for grammar issues and outside opinion plot holes (since she’s yet to cave in to the wonder that is SPN). The title is also gwentastic’s fault. You girls. I love you. (*music plays, mic beats a hasty retreat into the floor*)
Disclaimer: If I owned them, it would be a different kind of show and would have to run on cable.
If you'd like to read it all in one go at my website, you may do so here.
Otherwise...
Another fight over, another innocent (if unsuspecting) life saved and they stumble over each other on the way back into the motel room. Dean shoves Sam and calls him a Sasquatch, Sam trips him in retaliation and they’re arguing over the first shower when Ellen calls Sam’s phone.
“Hey, Ellen,” Sam says breathlessly, he’s still got Dean in a headlock but he breaks free while Sam’s distracted.
“First shower, thanks Ellen!” Dean yells, pulling off his shirt as he slips into the bathroom.
Sam rolls his eyes and Ellen yells at Ash in the background. He spreads out on Dean’s bed, too tired to sit up and too dirty for his own bed. He’ll get up again before Dean comes out or Dean will make him switch.
“Ash isn’t playing well with the others,” Ellen finally says into the phone, and now Sam can hear Jo in the background telling Ash about the myriad ways she knows to kill a man. Sam laughs a bit.
“Have another lead for you boys, if you want to stop by,” Ellen says.
Sam wants to ask if it’s nothing Jo can’t handle but that’s still something of a touchy subject so he says “sure” instead. “We’ll be by tomorrow, we both need some sleep tonight.”
“Rough hunt?”
“Sort of, ghost haunting a local farm. There were sheep involved.”
“Vicious little suckers.”
Sam laughs again. “When they want to be. We’ll tell you the whole story tomorrow. Dean’ll act out the sheep for you.” The water cuts off and Sam sits up quickly and moves over to a chair.
“Can’t wait,” Ellen says. “Well, you boys get some rest then. Take care.”
“You too.”
Dean’s out of the bathroom a bit later and it wasn’t a long shower but it’s a crap motel and all the hot water is gone. Sam’s too tired to complain so he cleans as quickly as possible and crawls into bed. Dean’s already asleep.
Sam listens to him breathe for a bit, the soft inhales and exhales of home. He doesn’t remember falling asleep.
--
Sam never sees how Dean gets the drop on them. Years of dealing with belligerent angry drunken hunters and Dean gets all three, apparently in the first try. He’s there, at the Roadhouse and Sam doesn’t think to question it at first, how he got from their motel to the bar so quickly, and without Sam. Jo, Ellen, and Ash are trussed up, caught against the floor and the bar. Jo is crying, tears dripping down her face and soaking into her shirt, her bravado is gone, nothing left but a lost little girl and Ellen is pissed, face a mask of lines and anger and betrayal. The angle on Ash is bad but he mostly looks confused.
Dean kicks back a beer; everything about him is casual and friendly. He drops down, crouches over them occasionally to lick at the salty tears on Jo’s face, to get in Ellen’s and whisper things that make her jerk against the ropes holding her down. He clenches his fist in the straggly hair hanging down Ash’s back and bites at his neck.
He hears Ellen yell “Christo” and Dean flinches and there’s a sick ball of terror and panic in his chest because Dean is fucking possessed and Sam doesn’t know what to do.
Then Dean takes out a cell phone (not his, and Sam wonders briefly where it is) and he’s on it, talking quietly as he kills them, three quick strikes across their throats.
Sam wakes up screaming, head pounding, the pain behind his eyes says it isn’t a dream, it’s a vision. Blood and tears and Dean in his mind, behind his eyelids, and his scream doesn’t wake Dean up because (he sees when his hands stop shaking enough to turn on the lamp) Dean is already gone.
The phone rings minutes later, as he slips his shoes on and opens the door and realizes that Dean has the Impala, the keys, their guns, everything. Even took his clothes and the laptop. Only left their cell phones because he must have guessed Sam would use Dean’s to track him. He answers the phone.
“Hey, Sammy.”Sam would answer, would say hello back and where are you and why did you take my clothes? but the breathing is wrong, it’s not Dean. Dean’s voice, but it isn’t him. He lives his life to the rhythm of Dean’s breaths, he knows them by heart.
Whimpers and bitten off curses in the background and fuck, it’s his vision come to life. Five minutes, that was all, why doesn’t he get any warnings anymore? “Don’t,” he says, and he knows it’s useless and futile.
“Don’t what, Sammy, waste my little wanna-be girlfriend? Her mom? The drunken redneck? Why not?”
“When the fuck did you crawl into Dean? Who are you?”
“Twenty questions now? I am Dean.”
“The hell you are.”
“In all the ways that matter, Sammy, I am. Sam I am. Huh.” He laughs a little, Dean’s laugh but not Dean’s laugh and it’s all wrong. “I’m doing this for you, Sammy,” he says, “first Jo.”
He can’t see it now, but he remembers. Quick slices and maybe, maybe she didn’t feel anything. Maybe it all happened too fast. He hears Ellen’s muffled shouts in the background, and Dean’s voice over everything. “Then Ellen. Then Ash.”
Harsh breaths over the phone and Sam hits the wall so hard his knuckles bleed against cracked plaster. “Fuck you,” he grinds out. “Why?”
“Three down,” is all he gets.
He kicks the wall, hard enough that he feels stupid a second later, his foot throbbing. Why? Why now, why Dean, why didn’t he see it sooner? Soon enough to stop him?
--
Sam limps out to the parking lot and he thinks he may have broken a toe but he doesn’t stop to check. He hot wires the old Camry in the space next to where the Impala had been and thumbs Bobby’s number as he drives towards the Roadhouse. He gets the voicemail. “I thought you said... You said these would keep... Jesus, Bobby, exactly how useless are these charms?” he says, a little breathless and a lot terrified and he doesn’t want to get closer to what he knows he’ll find. “Dean’s possessed. Don’t let him in.”
He drops the phone in the passenger seat and digs Bobby’s charm out of his pocket. It goes out the window.
--
Dean didn't move them. They're still tied up, together, hunched over against the counter, could be sleeping except there's blood everywhere, pooling underneath them and spread out under the tables. Eight times three is twenty-four pints of blood, a lake on the floor of the bar. The sharp copper smell is in his nose and the ends of his pants get heavy, soaking up everything he’s dragging them through as he crouches next to the bodies, his friends, and closes their eyes with heavy fingers.
Their bodies are lighter, however much all the blood- the whole lake of blood that used to be in them, giving them form and substance- however much all that blood weighed plus Sam remembers reading something about the weight of the soul, twenty-one grams, and he wonders if there’s truth in that story. He digs three graves out back, shovel digging into loose dirt and gravel. He’s never done this alone before. Dean has, and Sam wonders if it felt this way for Dean when Sam was gone, but probably not.
He sprinkles salt over them, soaks them with lighter fluid, drops three matches into the graves. He won’t give them a chance to become restless spirits, for them and for Dean. He thinks they’d understand.
He sometimes forgets about the smell, and isn't his life weird, that the smell of burning bodies is something he pushes aside because there are more horrifying things occupying his memory. They mostly only waste ghosts that are old, far older than this, when there’s nothing left but bones and dry skin. It smells like the woods outside Salvation, like pain and lies and Sam gags a little, staggers away to breathe fresher air.
The Roadhouse is a beacon in his rearview as he drives away, flames licking up to touch the stars.
--
He isn’t prepared for the next one (was he prepared for the first?). Blinding pain and the Camry spins out on loose gravel, ends up lodged against trees and Sam clutches his head, waiting for Dean’s fingers to wrap around his arms, for Dean to catch him when he slumps over the wheel, teeth clenched tightly against a scream. His hand stretches out and hits the passenger seat and he remembers that Dean isn’t there.
-Because he’s standing over Bobby, broken and bleeding on the ground and Bobby is angry, so much angrier than Ellen was. Dean's so tall. Sam hasn't thought of Dean as tall since puberty, when Dean's hand-me-down jeans stopped fitting and Dad took him to the Goodwill and even if they'd been used before, they'd never been used by Dean. So he's stopped thinking of Dean as tall (even though he knows he is) but he’s huge, gigantic standing over Bobby before he crouches, knife across Bobby’s neck and the grin on Dean’s face is sick, spattered by blood. He’s on the phone again. Sam knows who he’s talking to.
The vision fades and Sam tries to find his phone but the passenger window broke when the car hit the tree, the glass in intricate patterns over the seat and floor. His phone isn’t among the debris.
Head still fuzzy from the vision and the subsequent trip into a tree, Sam fumbles with his seat belt, unbuckling and he starts struggling with the door before giving up and climbing out the broken passenger window. His phone starts ringing as he falls to the ground, panting, biting back a moan as the movement jars his head. His phone hit a tree, the face is broken but it still works. He answers.
“Fuck you.”
“Hello to you too, little brother.”
“Don’t call me that. How’d you even-”
“Get the drop on Bobby? I know, right?” He’s happy, giddy, and Sam thinks of werewolves and Disneyland. It makes him sick. “I can’t believe it myself. Can’t reveal trade secrets now, Sammy. You done burning your friends yet? So precious, cleaning up your big brother’s messes.”
"Shut up." He pulls himself up, leans against the car, knees drawn up, his head resting against them, still pounding and he can barely concentrate on what the demon is saying. “Shut up,” he says again, because there’s nothing else.
“Don’t think so. You have anything you want to say to Bobby? He’s right here.”
“Just- You can’t-”
“Oh, too late. Bye, Bobby.” A gurgle in the background, Bobby tries to say something as Dean kills him, he remembers. He’ll never know. “I’ll leave him right here for you. I know you’ll come to burn him. Four down, little brother. Who’m I gonna do next?”
“You bastard.”
“Don’t talk about my momma like that.” Sam can hear the shit-eating grin over the phone line, the empty space between them, sees Dean’s face still covered in Bobby’s blood and he leans over to vomit in the grass.
“Aww, sick, Sammy? Want some soup?”
“Shut up. Shut up,” he says, voice rasping out his clenching throat.
“Now I will, but we’ll talk again.”
The line goes dead.
He scrolls through his phone list, looking for other hunters, other people to warn that Dean may be coming, but there aren’t many. They work alone, have always been alone, just Dean and Sam and Dad against the ghosts and the spirits and it’s always been that way. Except for Bobby, except for Ellen and Jo and Ash. He finds a few names and starts to call the first and thinks about Gordon, about trip wires and Dean’s muffled shouts. The only people he could trust not to tell anyone else are already dead and he doesn’t want anyone hunting Dean but him. Doesn’t trust anyone to hunt Dean but him, to have Dean in mind and not the demon. He puts the phone down and part of it feels like hope but most of it feels like giving up.
Eventually he drags himself to the highway and flags down a passing car. He doesn’t know what to tell the guy when he asks where he’s going, where he’s been, how he got out there without a car.
“Drop me off at the next town,” he says, slumping against the window.
--
He still has some of Dean’s credit cards in his wallet and he stops to buy underwear and a change of clothes before he steals another car, another point against his karma and he thinks he should quit keeping track.
Bobby’s house isn’t far. His body is right where the demon left it, a smiley face drawn in congealing blood on the wall above his head. Something inside Sam twists and breaks and he stares at the face, blood streaking like paint down the wall, and it’s just like a million times before when they were kids and Dean would breathe on the window of the Impala, draw faces in the condensation to make him laugh, remind him that he’s not alone.
He wants Dean more than ever, wants him to come in like the cavalry, like John Wayne and make it all better and even though Sam is old enough to know it doesn't work that way, it never really stopped feeling that way. And that’s it, isn’t it? Dean has always saved him and now, now it’s up to Sam and he has no idea what to do. No one he can call.
The body is heavy and Sam staggers under the weight as he drags him out back, digs another grave and it’s hard to think he might get used to this before the end, cleaning up after Dean. He always figured it would end up being the other way around.
“Bye, Bobby,” he says, choking on the ash and flame.
The house is still the organized mess that Bobby kept it in, too many notes, papers, secrets filed away to have any kind of order. Bobby knows- knew- more about demons and possession than anyone else they knew, but the demon knows that too, and Bobby’s journal is a smoldering mess in the fireplace, nothing left to salvage.
Sam lights a fire to Bobby’s house too. No sense in leaving anything that might trace its way back to Dean.
He takes Bobby’s truck, another cache of weapons and some holy water and he thinks Bobby wouldn’t mind.
--
No more visions so Sam gets a room for the night in the cheapest hotel he can find. Tacky decor, but he isn’t there for the aesthetics. He showers, ash and soot and blood mingling together in the drain, all that’s left of Bobby. All that’s left of Ellen and Jo and Ash. He scrubs at his face and he’s tired, so tired and he doesn’t know where he left his life. He’s about to face plant into the pillow when his phone rings and the display still doesn’t work but he answers it anyway.
“Just called to say goodnight, Sammy.”
“Stop calling me that.”
“Why? Only I get to call you that, remember?”
“Not you.”
“Oh, I’m in here, Sammy. I’m still here.”
And for a moment it sounds so much like Dean, and for a moment Sam closes his eyes and wishes. But the demon speaks again, twisting Dean’s voice and Dean’s mind. “So I’m guessing you didn’t find it.”
“Find what?”
“Bobby knew a lot about us, you know. He devoted his hunting years to demons, demon possessions. You people like to have specialties.”
“Dean and I don’t.”
“The ever-present anomaly, yes I know. Regardless. I burned Bobby’s journal, couldn’t leave anything obvious laying about. I still have the Key of Solomon, silly of you boys to leave it in the car all the time. It’s so mobile. But I left you a clue, Sammy, if you were smart enough to look. Too bad you were too broken up, had to burn poor Bobby and his house. Didn’t want anyone to find my fingerprints, did you? Wanted to make a clean getaway.”
They’ll lie, they’ll say anything, and everything black and violent and vile in Sam churns in his stomach and “NO” isn’t enough but it’s all he can think to say.
“You could have had me out, Sammy. You could have had Dean back, always, never another problem. Too bad you burned it.”
“No. You. Why would you leave that?”
“It’s a game. Do you know how long eternity is? You can’t kill me, whatever you do. So we’ll play a little game, Sammy, and we’ll see who wins. ‘Night!”
The phone drops to the ground and it feels like the hospital corridor all over again, the coffee cup landing perfectly upright at his feet. He has no context for how to deal with this, no experience in this kind of world at all.
He thought he could sleep. He thought he could burn Bobby’s remains, steal his truck, and then check into a motel and catch forty.
He doesn’t always have the best ideas.
He knows he should get up, get dressed, hit the road and find Dean and Dean has always been the person that gets him moving, gets his head out of books and research and all that thinking he does, carefully planning every move. Dean runs in, guns cocked and it’s all action first, thought second. Maybe that’s why Dean found him so quickly last time. You can’t out think a demon.
--
Hours later. He can’t tell if he slept but there’s crap in the corners of his eyes, so maybe he did. He sits up slowly, wincing at sore muscles from digging four graves in one night by himself. Dean’s always been there to spell him before.
He’s about to get up when he realizes that he doesn’t know where to go, where the demon could be, who he’s going after next. He lays there, lets his thoughts wander and they go to Bobby, to Ellen, to Jo and Ash and he gets up because he knows if he lets himself, he’ll drown in that sorrow and he can’t, he has to find Dean.
He’s showered and he skips breakfast because he isn’t sure his stomach can handle food yet. It’s a small town but they’ve got a local library with internet connections. Sam doesn’t really know where to start without his links and his research notes but he types “demon possession” into google and works from there. His eyes ache from staring at the computer through the constant sharp migraine and his stomach rolls again. He leaves the computer, heading for the bathroom.
He’s just inside the door when it starts to hit him and he sits so he doesn’t fall.
Another room, another hunter’s home and Sam can see him, pressed against the wall and Dean’s knife at his throat. Another phone in his hand. Sam only met Joshua once, years ago, bigger than life because he was taller than Dean, taller than Dad. He’s not that big anymore and when the demon slits his throat he falls to the ground and he seems so small.
His face is pressed against the cold tile, head pounding and he pushes himself up, grabs in his bag for the aspirin he bought last night but he knows it won’t help. Nothing helps but time and he isn’t getting enough.
The phone rings and he sits against the wall, feet braced against the trash can and his head cradled on his knees, heavy and defeated and it won’t do any good to rush there, the demon will already be gone.
“Haven’t seen Joshua in a while, have you?”
“Dean-” he cuts himself off too late.
“Told you! Told you I was Dean!”
“You are not. You’re nothing like him at all.”
“I’m more like him than you’ll ever know. Do you think Dad’ll be happy to see his friends in hell? Misery does love company.”
“He’s not-”
“Oh he is, but you didn’t know that, did you? Dean never told you. Your dad’s been there all along, Sammy. And now Joshua will join him.”
He’d say no. He’d say don’t. But he’s said them before and none of it does any good. He doesn’t say anything and there’s the sound of a body hitting the floor. Joshua, looking small and broken and dead.
“Five down, Sammy. That’s a lot, right? It’s not enough, not yet.”
Sam doesn’t answer, just breathes into the phone and prays, maybe, begs for this to not be happening.
“Sam? Sammy? You still there?”
A deep breath. “What?” he bites out.
“Do you think he’ll say hi to Dad for us?”
The demon is still giggling when Sam hangs up the phone. Joshua’s home is a couple of hours away but there’s no need to hurry. He grabs cold pop tarts and a questionable cup of coffee at the gas station on the way out of town and he wonders about hell. About where his dad is and what kind of deal Dean made and he adds that to the list of questions he will beat out of Dean if he has to. Someday.
--
Time passes. Days, maybe a week. He doesn’t want to think about how long he’s been doing this, how many phone calls the demon has made, how many people Sam’s watched die.
Six down. Ten down. Twelve down.
Friends, people he hasn’t seen since they were taller than him, since he and Dean fought over shotgun and the last s’more over a campfire. Hunters, all of them, even if he didn’t know that then he can certainly tell now and he knew Dean was good, good at surprising, good at trapping, good at killing, but he didn’t know he was that good. He doesn’t know if he should be proud or not, if it’s Dean that’s good, or the demon. The next time the demon calls he has to bite his tongue so he doesn’t ask.
--
Middle of the night when the phone rings again and Sam had just fallen asleep, Leno over and the wet bar pretty much exhausted.
“Sam?” The voice is frantic, worried, but the breaths are right and for a minute Sam can’t answer, can’t even think. Dean. “Sam, you there?”
“Yeah, yeah. God, it’s good to hear you. How’d you-”
“I didn’t, he’s still in me, squatting like a bug. I can’t. Sam, you have to come get me. You have to find a way to kill me. I don’t care what it takes, I can’t keep doing this.”
Not gonna happen, Sam thinks but doesn’t say, they can fight about it later. He sits up quickly, already pulling on his shoes. He’d never gotten undressed. “Where are you?”
But the breathing changes, subtly, but just enough and Sam knows. “Woo! He’s a strong boy. You didn’t think it was that easy, did you?”
He kicks his shoes off, throws them against the wall and the neighbors holler and it doesn’t make him feel any better. “Damn it, why are you doing this?”
The demon laughs, and it’s Dean’s laugh and Sam doesn’t want to hear it. “Do I need a reason, Sammy? Slaughter is a pastime, a means to an end, a pleasant way to while away idle hours. Finding meaning in slaughter is a useless exercise, you know that. Dean could tell you that.”
The phone bites into Sam’s hand as it clenches, a silent protest. “Don’t talk about my brother.”
“But I am your brother, Sammy.”
“No you’re not.”
“He’s still in here. You know he is. Oh, he doesn’t like me. But I like him. He’s so dark, so many dark delicious places in here. I could play in here for years.”
“You won’t. I’ll get you out.”
“Oh, oh Sammy. That’s precious.”
“I’ve done it before.”
“Not me, you haven’t. My little sister, my little brother, maybe. But I’m smarter than they are and I’m holding all the cards.” A long sigh, and the breaths aren’t right, too harsh, too fast, Sam can’t put his finger on it. He wants to hang up but he wants to see where this goes, he wants Dean again.
“You remember, Sammy, that town we were living in that last year of high school?”
He drops to the bed, fight gone for the moment. “With the pixies,” he says.
“Oh, you’re playing along? Yeah, damn, that was funny. There was this counselor at school. She was pretty hot, had a little thing for Dean. Wanted him to apply to college, said he had the grades. So he did, just to shut her up and because after he did she let him fuck her over her desk. Did he tell you that?”
“No.” He remembers Dean back then, a younger, slightly happier version of himself but he was never carefree, never believed he was immortal, that nothing could touch him because he was young and alive. Nothing like the other kids.
“I did. He got in, Sammy, did he tell you that?”
“No.”
“Dean could have gone to college. Done something with his life. Had something to turn to when the inevitable happens. But he didn’t, Sammy. You know why?”
It waits for a response, breathes along the phone line and Sam listens at how wrong it is, how different and he doesn’t answer, doesn’t say anything because he’s tired of this game where the word that comes to him first is always ‘no’.
“He didn’t want to leave you alone.” And then Dean’s voice drops, sly and slick and disgusting, “Isn’t that sweet?”
“It’s not true,” he says, and wishes he could think of something else to say, something beyond the constant theme of denial, some way to attack instead of defend. But he’s tired and it’s right, it knows the game and he doesn’t.
“But it is, that’s the best part!” It sounds really excited, killing Bobby excited and Sam’s gut rolls again. “You were so young, only fourteen. Too big for your own skin and still falling over yourself and getting in fights with Dad every other day. Who knew what trouble you’d get into with me watching out for you?”
“I could handle myself.” But he remembers that too, walking it off with Dean after another brutal shouting match, as far and as fast as he could from the trailer they’d rented in the small town they were squatting in and Sam never talked after those fights because he was always afraid he’d cry instead. He couldn’t cry in front of Dean. Dean walked with him, rarely ever spoke but he’d put his hand on Sam’s shoulder and it was just when Sam was starting to get taller than Dean, he’d reach up and he’d squeeze the muscle there and say I’m here.
“‘Course you could. You don’t need him, do you? You’ve got your own back, Sammy. What he does for you, it doesn’t mean anything to you, does it?”
“I didn’t say that.” Did he? All the talk about going back to school, about killing the demon and going back to his life, is that what Dean heard?
“You don’t have to. You know, four years later when you got into college? He never believed you’d go. Up until the day you left, running away while he and Dad were out? Man, that’s cold. That’s gratitude, Sammy. That’s love.”
Cold knots form in the pit of his stomach, sick and queasy and he might throw up. They lie, sure, but they’ll tell the truth just to fuck with your head. “You don’t know anything.”
“I do. I know so much more than you think. So much more.”
Sam hangs up but it isn’t soon enough and he wonders how much Dean will remember, how much Sam’ll have to apologize for, explain, ask about later.
--
Sam's had a migraine for three weeks now. The visions never seem to end, one after another as Dean- no, not Dean, the demon- kills everyone they've ever known. Thirteen, fourteen down.
The fifteenth person isn’t a hunter.
Different motel, different city, but the pain behind his eyes is still the same when it hits him, knocks him to his knees on the tile in the bathroom. Mike. They saw him the last time they went home, the first and last time Sam ever saw his mother. Big mechanic’s arms, he’s strong in that ‘beat your ass in a bar fight’ way but he doesn’t have anything on Dean, on the demon.
Mike still doesn’t even know who Dean is, doesn’t see the little boy he gave ice cream to in the middle of the night when he woke up screaming about fire and death.
The phone rings.
“Sammy, you remember Mike? He changed your diaper a couple of times, when Dad was too drunk to do it himself.”
“Mom had just died, asshole.”
“Oh, name calling, Sammy? For that you don’t get to say goodbye.” Another slice, another thud, and it’s sick how routine all of this is beginning to be.
“Why Mike?” he says, swallowing down protest and bile. “He wasn’t even a hunter.”
“You didn’t think this was only about hunters, did you? This is about you, Sammy. You and me here. Just wanted to get your hunter friends first before they caught wind.”
“There are other hunters, other people who could find you.”
The demon snorts. “I don’t think so, Sammy. You didn’t tell anyone. Dean knows you didn’t tell anyone, and let me tell you, that tastes sweet. You could find me if you really wanted to find me, but they couldn’t. You and Dean, you ran with the best and the brightest, you know? Heads of the class, all the smart kids have to stick together.”
“So the rest of us are too dumb to find you?”
“The rest of THEM, Sammy. And I didn’t say it, you did.”
It’s like talking to Dean sometimes, and what does that say? Does the demon sound like Dean? Or does Dean sound like a demon?
“Fifteen down.”
--
He waits to burn Mike. Civilians like to find their loved ones, to bury them and let them be at peace, as much as they can. Lots of blood and a missing body would stir up more trouble, and he can’t burn the house with Mike’s family inside. Can’t leave it though, victims of murder make restless spirits, hunters or not.
He attends the funeral. Watches Patricia, Mike’s widow, sob and cry and grab hold of their mostly grown children. Watches them lower the casket into the ground. He doesn’t remember Mike, not really, except for their one trip home. Dean knew him better, knew what flavor of ice cream he preferred, told him about watching Mike’s big TV, which was way bigger than their old TV, up way past bed time because there was a lot Dad didn’t care about in the beginning.
He digs Mike’s grave up that night, salts and burns his body, says goodbye for him and for Dean.
--
Later that night, new hotel, new shower, and he’d washed the dirt from the cemetery off when the phone rings again. He knows who it is, no one else calls him anymore.
“You still up, Sammy? How was the funeral?”
He doesn’t have the energy to be angry, to be sad and when he’s tired enough, numb enough, he can almost pretend he’s talking to Dean. “Fine.”
“I’m really beginning to enjoy our late night chats.”
“Yeah, me too.”
“Don’t lie to me, Sammy. I know you better than anyone.”
“You don’t. Dean does.”
“Not so, young grasshopper. I know you. You think we don’t watch you? You think we don’t watch all of you? The special children, yes, blah blah plans I could honestly care less. The hunters, though, we love watching you. Like a big soap opera.”
“You just killed off half your cast.”
“Yeah, they’ll be pretty pissed for that, but this show is so much better. Point is, I know you. So does Dean. And I know him.”
“Following that convoluted logic-”
“Both of us in here are big fans. I have another secret for you, Sammy. Want to hear it?”
“No.”
“Yes you do. Lying again, Sammy, how does anyone ever trust you? You’ll want to know this. It’s about Jessica.”
Years and hearing her name can still get to him. He sits up, a hot rush of pain and anger and fire in his chest. “What?” he says, tries to say, but his mouth is dry.
The demon hears it, knows and there’s glee in his voice, probably a fucking song in his heart when he says, “Dean was glad she died.”
“He wouldn’t-” But the question is there, which is all it wanted in the first place. The rush turns to more cold angry stones in his stomach and he wonders why every conversation leaves him wanting to puke.
“Oh, he was sorry you hurt. But you think he really wanted to leave you there? To drop you off and say goodbye?”
“Of course not, but he knew I wanted-” A life. Law school. Something Dean wasn’t in, couldn’t touch, somewhere he couldn’t follow. He’d chosen his life and Dean wasn’t allowed. The stones in his stomach are heavier, weighing him down into the mattress and the scratchy sheets.
“You’re really not that naive? Really?” He’s disappointed the demon and he can’t tell if that makes him happy or sad. “Maybe you are. He hated her, Sammy. He hated her for taking you away from him. And when she died he danced inside because you were angry enough to come with him again. Got you back in the car, didn’t it?”
“You’re a lying son of a bitch.”
“You should really stop bringing my mama into our little conversations. She’s your mama too.”
--
The demon calls him every time.
Cassie welcomed him with open arms. Sarah asked where Sam was, before a look in the demon's eye had her backing away, attempting to shut the door.
Seventeen down. Twenty down. Twenty-four down. Visions bleed into reality and the only way he can tell the difference anymore is that he can never reach Dean in time, can't put out a hand to stop him, to help whoever it is on the wrong end of a hunting knife. Can't warn them in time.
Sam attends some of the funerals, not all. He can’t look in Cassie’s mother’s face and tell her it’ll be okay, that he’s sorry. He digs up a lot of graves and burns a lot of bodies and he never gets caught, no one ever roams the graveyards the way he and Dean do.
Pain sharpens behind his eyes, images playing across his retinas, frolicking children with a maypole of barbed wire. A face he recognizes, another door opened to Dean because Sam can't remember everyone they've talked to and his phone list only gets him so far. Another person dies.
The vision fades, blood and death replaced by ugly wallpaper, another hotel room Sam can't afford to waste time in. His phone rings and the sound batters against his eardrums, sharp and shrill.
"Missouri," he says, doesn’t even wait for her to identify herself. Her face in the vision, her death he just witnessed. "Dean-"
“He's coming for me."
"You know, right? Get out of there.”
"I can't run, Sam. I've seen it; I've known all along he was meant to be my end. I never saw the where or the why, but I understand that now. But I want you to tell him."
“Tell him what?"
"That it isn't his fault, sugar."
"He'll never buy that."
"It doesn't matter. He just needs to hear it. Sam? You won't have to burn my bones. Don't come here. I'm not holding on to anything. I've known for so long, I've made my peace."
"Missouri, wait, wait, I'm coming to you. We can stop him."
"There's no time, he's already close. Very close. You want to know how this will end, but I can't tell you. It isn't written yet. Listen, will you do me a favor? Call the authorities. Tell them where I am. I don't want to sit around here for days, decaying in the heat. I want to be beautiful in my casket."
"I'll do it-"
"You're going to say you're sorry, and I'm going to tell you that it isn't your fault either, but you won't believe me any more than he will. Look out for each other. Remember you're all you've got."
"But we can-"
"You should know by now there are some things you can't change, no matter how much time you're given. I knew the minute John introduced me to his boys, but it never changed anything. I love Dean like I love you, and what's coming isn't him. Remember to tell him, Sam."
Sam can't form words anymore, mouth open on a silent wail for all he never knew, and in the quiet he hears the demon coming, opening the door in Missouri's house.
"You tell him," she says, and hangs up the phone.
Another hole driven into another wall and maybe the skin on his knuckles will never come back. Who's left? Who's left to lose? Soon the answer will be no one. No one but Dean.
His phone rings again. “Missouri?” Mocking laughter and he clenches his hand around the phone. Anger, hatred are a knot in his chest. “You. Fuck you. WHY?”
“What a potty mouth. Me, Sammy. Did she call you? She really is a psychic!”
“Shut up. Just shut up! You knew she was.” He tries to breathe around the knot and it’s so hard. He’s gasping and he doesn’t realize he’s crying until the tears hit his hand, clenched around the phone. She knew, she’d known all this time and even then, they couldn’t stop it. Sam wouldn’t be able to stop it. Nothing he could do, no way to help Dean. Useless and futile, all he can do is follow after, clean up the demon’s messes and wait for the end.
“Maybe,” the demon says. “People get lucky all the time.”
His breath hitches when he speaks, he can’t hide the tears. “She was real,” he says quietly, because it matters.
“Aw, are you, are you crying, Sammy? That’s so sweet!”
Sam hangs up the phone. Familiar routine. He calls the non-emergency line in Lawrence, gives them a fake name and Missouri’s name and address. He can do one thing right tonight.
He stares at the ceiling till sunrise.
On to part two
Title: Demons Made Me Spill My Guts Like a Girl
Author: Merrin/walkawayslowly
Pairings/Characters: Sam/Dean, mentions of almost every minor (and not so minor) character from the beginning of the series on
Rating: R for violence, sex, and other squickiness
Summary: Dean gets possessed. Violence and angst ensue from there. (Or, the secrets he keeps will kill him someday.)
Word Count: ~20,000
Feedback: Makes the world go round. Especially concrit.
Warnings: Angst, angst, and more angst piled on top of angst wrapped with a bow of angst and did I mention angst? Minor character death all over the place. (One or two could be construed as major, but neither one of THE MAJOR characters die, if you catch my heavy spoilerific drift.) There’s some psychological torture, a bit of physical torture(ish) so if that’s not your bag, I’d skip this. I’d also skip this if you’re looking for sweetness and light and rainbows and puppies. There is, also, quite a bit of schmoop towards the end, as I don’t know how to not be schmoopy.
Notes: (Which, oddly enough, sound like a freaking Oscar acceptance speech, OMG. Sorry!) God, I wish I knew where all this angst came from. I’m really a happy person, I swear! gwentastic came up with the original story, I kept going in and making it darker than it had been originally so if you leave this experience permanently scarred, it’s probably my fault. (Although, it was A LOT darker at one point, but I'm a big fluffy chicken.) If you leave it thinking “wow, what a crazy good story,” that’s probably her fault. Huge thanks and a big sloppy kiss go out to her also for letting me natter on to her about the story, and for being such an awesome plot hole plugger. (Which, coincidentally, sounds vaguely naughty.) She also beta’d it, so thanks to her for that as well. nemoinis has beta’d every freaking thing I’ve written from the dawn of time and she’s gotten past the point where she’s nice about it but she brings the beta-fu so it’s hard to mind. She's brutal and I love every second of it. incredulity let me read it to her in parts over the phone and cried in all the appropriate places and if you can't love making your friends cry, what can you love? misskittye checked it for grammar issues and outside opinion plot holes (since she’s yet to cave in to the wonder that is SPN). The title is also gwentastic’s fault. You girls. I love you. (*music plays, mic beats a hasty retreat into the floor*)
Disclaimer: If I owned them, it would be a different kind of show and would have to run on cable.
If you'd like to read it all in one go at my website, you may do so here.
Otherwise...
Another fight over, another innocent (if unsuspecting) life saved and they stumble over each other on the way back into the motel room. Dean shoves Sam and calls him a Sasquatch, Sam trips him in retaliation and they’re arguing over the first shower when Ellen calls Sam’s phone.
“Hey, Ellen,” Sam says breathlessly, he’s still got Dean in a headlock but he breaks free while Sam’s distracted.
“First shower, thanks Ellen!” Dean yells, pulling off his shirt as he slips into the bathroom.
Sam rolls his eyes and Ellen yells at Ash in the background. He spreads out on Dean’s bed, too tired to sit up and too dirty for his own bed. He’ll get up again before Dean comes out or Dean will make him switch.
“Ash isn’t playing well with the others,” Ellen finally says into the phone, and now Sam can hear Jo in the background telling Ash about the myriad ways she knows to kill a man. Sam laughs a bit.
“Have another lead for you boys, if you want to stop by,” Ellen says.
Sam wants to ask if it’s nothing Jo can’t handle but that’s still something of a touchy subject so he says “sure” instead. “We’ll be by tomorrow, we both need some sleep tonight.”
“Rough hunt?”
“Sort of, ghost haunting a local farm. There were sheep involved.”
“Vicious little suckers.”
Sam laughs again. “When they want to be. We’ll tell you the whole story tomorrow. Dean’ll act out the sheep for you.” The water cuts off and Sam sits up quickly and moves over to a chair.
“Can’t wait,” Ellen says. “Well, you boys get some rest then. Take care.”
“You too.”
Dean’s out of the bathroom a bit later and it wasn’t a long shower but it’s a crap motel and all the hot water is gone. Sam’s too tired to complain so he cleans as quickly as possible and crawls into bed. Dean’s already asleep.
Sam listens to him breathe for a bit, the soft inhales and exhales of home. He doesn’t remember falling asleep.
--
Sam never sees how Dean gets the drop on them. Years of dealing with belligerent angry drunken hunters and Dean gets all three, apparently in the first try. He’s there, at the Roadhouse and Sam doesn’t think to question it at first, how he got from their motel to the bar so quickly, and without Sam. Jo, Ellen, and Ash are trussed up, caught against the floor and the bar. Jo is crying, tears dripping down her face and soaking into her shirt, her bravado is gone, nothing left but a lost little girl and Ellen is pissed, face a mask of lines and anger and betrayal. The angle on Ash is bad but he mostly looks confused.
Dean kicks back a beer; everything about him is casual and friendly. He drops down, crouches over them occasionally to lick at the salty tears on Jo’s face, to get in Ellen’s and whisper things that make her jerk against the ropes holding her down. He clenches his fist in the straggly hair hanging down Ash’s back and bites at his neck.
He hears Ellen yell “Christo” and Dean flinches and there’s a sick ball of terror and panic in his chest because Dean is fucking possessed and Sam doesn’t know what to do.
Then Dean takes out a cell phone (not his, and Sam wonders briefly where it is) and he’s on it, talking quietly as he kills them, three quick strikes across their throats.
Sam wakes up screaming, head pounding, the pain behind his eyes says it isn’t a dream, it’s a vision. Blood and tears and Dean in his mind, behind his eyelids, and his scream doesn’t wake Dean up because (he sees when his hands stop shaking enough to turn on the lamp) Dean is already gone.
The phone rings minutes later, as he slips his shoes on and opens the door and realizes that Dean has the Impala, the keys, their guns, everything. Even took his clothes and the laptop. Only left their cell phones because he must have guessed Sam would use Dean’s to track him. He answers the phone.
“Hey, Sammy.”Sam would answer, would say hello back and where are you and why did you take my clothes? but the breathing is wrong, it’s not Dean. Dean’s voice, but it isn’t him. He lives his life to the rhythm of Dean’s breaths, he knows them by heart.
Whimpers and bitten off curses in the background and fuck, it’s his vision come to life. Five minutes, that was all, why doesn’t he get any warnings anymore? “Don’t,” he says, and he knows it’s useless and futile.
“Don’t what, Sammy, waste my little wanna-be girlfriend? Her mom? The drunken redneck? Why not?”
“When the fuck did you crawl into Dean? Who are you?”
“Twenty questions now? I am Dean.”
“The hell you are.”
“In all the ways that matter, Sammy, I am. Sam I am. Huh.” He laughs a little, Dean’s laugh but not Dean’s laugh and it’s all wrong. “I’m doing this for you, Sammy,” he says, “first Jo.”
He can’t see it now, but he remembers. Quick slices and maybe, maybe she didn’t feel anything. Maybe it all happened too fast. He hears Ellen’s muffled shouts in the background, and Dean’s voice over everything. “Then Ellen. Then Ash.”
Harsh breaths over the phone and Sam hits the wall so hard his knuckles bleed against cracked plaster. “Fuck you,” he grinds out. “Why?”
“Three down,” is all he gets.
He kicks the wall, hard enough that he feels stupid a second later, his foot throbbing. Why? Why now, why Dean, why didn’t he see it sooner? Soon enough to stop him?
--
Sam limps out to the parking lot and he thinks he may have broken a toe but he doesn’t stop to check. He hot wires the old Camry in the space next to where the Impala had been and thumbs Bobby’s number as he drives towards the Roadhouse. He gets the voicemail. “I thought you said... You said these would keep... Jesus, Bobby, exactly how useless are these charms?” he says, a little breathless and a lot terrified and he doesn’t want to get closer to what he knows he’ll find. “Dean’s possessed. Don’t let him in.”
He drops the phone in the passenger seat and digs Bobby’s charm out of his pocket. It goes out the window.
--
Dean didn't move them. They're still tied up, together, hunched over against the counter, could be sleeping except there's blood everywhere, pooling underneath them and spread out under the tables. Eight times three is twenty-four pints of blood, a lake on the floor of the bar. The sharp copper smell is in his nose and the ends of his pants get heavy, soaking up everything he’s dragging them through as he crouches next to the bodies, his friends, and closes their eyes with heavy fingers.
Their bodies are lighter, however much all the blood- the whole lake of blood that used to be in them, giving them form and substance- however much all that blood weighed plus Sam remembers reading something about the weight of the soul, twenty-one grams, and he wonders if there’s truth in that story. He digs three graves out back, shovel digging into loose dirt and gravel. He’s never done this alone before. Dean has, and Sam wonders if it felt this way for Dean when Sam was gone, but probably not.
He sprinkles salt over them, soaks them with lighter fluid, drops three matches into the graves. He won’t give them a chance to become restless spirits, for them and for Dean. He thinks they’d understand.
He sometimes forgets about the smell, and isn't his life weird, that the smell of burning bodies is something he pushes aside because there are more horrifying things occupying his memory. They mostly only waste ghosts that are old, far older than this, when there’s nothing left but bones and dry skin. It smells like the woods outside Salvation, like pain and lies and Sam gags a little, staggers away to breathe fresher air.
The Roadhouse is a beacon in his rearview as he drives away, flames licking up to touch the stars.
--
He isn’t prepared for the next one (was he prepared for the first?). Blinding pain and the Camry spins out on loose gravel, ends up lodged against trees and Sam clutches his head, waiting for Dean’s fingers to wrap around his arms, for Dean to catch him when he slumps over the wheel, teeth clenched tightly against a scream. His hand stretches out and hits the passenger seat and he remembers that Dean isn’t there.
-Because he’s standing over Bobby, broken and bleeding on the ground and Bobby is angry, so much angrier than Ellen was. Dean's so tall. Sam hasn't thought of Dean as tall since puberty, when Dean's hand-me-down jeans stopped fitting and Dad took him to the Goodwill and even if they'd been used before, they'd never been used by Dean. So he's stopped thinking of Dean as tall (even though he knows he is) but he’s huge, gigantic standing over Bobby before he crouches, knife across Bobby’s neck and the grin on Dean’s face is sick, spattered by blood. He’s on the phone again. Sam knows who he’s talking to.
The vision fades and Sam tries to find his phone but the passenger window broke when the car hit the tree, the glass in intricate patterns over the seat and floor. His phone isn’t among the debris.
Head still fuzzy from the vision and the subsequent trip into a tree, Sam fumbles with his seat belt, unbuckling and he starts struggling with the door before giving up and climbing out the broken passenger window. His phone starts ringing as he falls to the ground, panting, biting back a moan as the movement jars his head. His phone hit a tree, the face is broken but it still works. He answers.
“Fuck you.”
“Hello to you too, little brother.”
“Don’t call me that. How’d you even-”
“Get the drop on Bobby? I know, right?” He’s happy, giddy, and Sam thinks of werewolves and Disneyland. It makes him sick. “I can’t believe it myself. Can’t reveal trade secrets now, Sammy. You done burning your friends yet? So precious, cleaning up your big brother’s messes.”
"Shut up." He pulls himself up, leans against the car, knees drawn up, his head resting against them, still pounding and he can barely concentrate on what the demon is saying. “Shut up,” he says again, because there’s nothing else.
“Don’t think so. You have anything you want to say to Bobby? He’s right here.”
“Just- You can’t-”
“Oh, too late. Bye, Bobby.” A gurgle in the background, Bobby tries to say something as Dean kills him, he remembers. He’ll never know. “I’ll leave him right here for you. I know you’ll come to burn him. Four down, little brother. Who’m I gonna do next?”
“You bastard.”
“Don’t talk about my momma like that.” Sam can hear the shit-eating grin over the phone line, the empty space between them, sees Dean’s face still covered in Bobby’s blood and he leans over to vomit in the grass.
“Aww, sick, Sammy? Want some soup?”
“Shut up. Shut up,” he says, voice rasping out his clenching throat.
“Now I will, but we’ll talk again.”
The line goes dead.
He scrolls through his phone list, looking for other hunters, other people to warn that Dean may be coming, but there aren’t many. They work alone, have always been alone, just Dean and Sam and Dad against the ghosts and the spirits and it’s always been that way. Except for Bobby, except for Ellen and Jo and Ash. He finds a few names and starts to call the first and thinks about Gordon, about trip wires and Dean’s muffled shouts. The only people he could trust not to tell anyone else are already dead and he doesn’t want anyone hunting Dean but him. Doesn’t trust anyone to hunt Dean but him, to have Dean in mind and not the demon. He puts the phone down and part of it feels like hope but most of it feels like giving up.
Eventually he drags himself to the highway and flags down a passing car. He doesn’t know what to tell the guy when he asks where he’s going, where he’s been, how he got out there without a car.
“Drop me off at the next town,” he says, slumping against the window.
--
He still has some of Dean’s credit cards in his wallet and he stops to buy underwear and a change of clothes before he steals another car, another point against his karma and he thinks he should quit keeping track.
Bobby’s house isn’t far. His body is right where the demon left it, a smiley face drawn in congealing blood on the wall above his head. Something inside Sam twists and breaks and he stares at the face, blood streaking like paint down the wall, and it’s just like a million times before when they were kids and Dean would breathe on the window of the Impala, draw faces in the condensation to make him laugh, remind him that he’s not alone.
He wants Dean more than ever, wants him to come in like the cavalry, like John Wayne and make it all better and even though Sam is old enough to know it doesn't work that way, it never really stopped feeling that way. And that’s it, isn’t it? Dean has always saved him and now, now it’s up to Sam and he has no idea what to do. No one he can call.
The body is heavy and Sam staggers under the weight as he drags him out back, digs another grave and it’s hard to think he might get used to this before the end, cleaning up after Dean. He always figured it would end up being the other way around.
“Bye, Bobby,” he says, choking on the ash and flame.
The house is still the organized mess that Bobby kept it in, too many notes, papers, secrets filed away to have any kind of order. Bobby knows- knew- more about demons and possession than anyone else they knew, but the demon knows that too, and Bobby’s journal is a smoldering mess in the fireplace, nothing left to salvage.
Sam lights a fire to Bobby’s house too. No sense in leaving anything that might trace its way back to Dean.
He takes Bobby’s truck, another cache of weapons and some holy water and he thinks Bobby wouldn’t mind.
--
No more visions so Sam gets a room for the night in the cheapest hotel he can find. Tacky decor, but he isn’t there for the aesthetics. He showers, ash and soot and blood mingling together in the drain, all that’s left of Bobby. All that’s left of Ellen and Jo and Ash. He scrubs at his face and he’s tired, so tired and he doesn’t know where he left his life. He’s about to face plant into the pillow when his phone rings and the display still doesn’t work but he answers it anyway.
“Just called to say goodnight, Sammy.”
“Stop calling me that.”
“Why? Only I get to call you that, remember?”
“Not you.”
“Oh, I’m in here, Sammy. I’m still here.”
And for a moment it sounds so much like Dean, and for a moment Sam closes his eyes and wishes. But the demon speaks again, twisting Dean’s voice and Dean’s mind. “So I’m guessing you didn’t find it.”
“Find what?”
“Bobby knew a lot about us, you know. He devoted his hunting years to demons, demon possessions. You people like to have specialties.”
“Dean and I don’t.”
“The ever-present anomaly, yes I know. Regardless. I burned Bobby’s journal, couldn’t leave anything obvious laying about. I still have the Key of Solomon, silly of you boys to leave it in the car all the time. It’s so mobile. But I left you a clue, Sammy, if you were smart enough to look. Too bad you were too broken up, had to burn poor Bobby and his house. Didn’t want anyone to find my fingerprints, did you? Wanted to make a clean getaway.”
They’ll lie, they’ll say anything, and everything black and violent and vile in Sam churns in his stomach and “NO” isn’t enough but it’s all he can think to say.
“You could have had me out, Sammy. You could have had Dean back, always, never another problem. Too bad you burned it.”
“No. You. Why would you leave that?”
“It’s a game. Do you know how long eternity is? You can’t kill me, whatever you do. So we’ll play a little game, Sammy, and we’ll see who wins. ‘Night!”
The phone drops to the ground and it feels like the hospital corridor all over again, the coffee cup landing perfectly upright at his feet. He has no context for how to deal with this, no experience in this kind of world at all.
He thought he could sleep. He thought he could burn Bobby’s remains, steal his truck, and then check into a motel and catch forty.
He doesn’t always have the best ideas.
He knows he should get up, get dressed, hit the road and find Dean and Dean has always been the person that gets him moving, gets his head out of books and research and all that thinking he does, carefully planning every move. Dean runs in, guns cocked and it’s all action first, thought second. Maybe that’s why Dean found him so quickly last time. You can’t out think a demon.
--
Hours later. He can’t tell if he slept but there’s crap in the corners of his eyes, so maybe he did. He sits up slowly, wincing at sore muscles from digging four graves in one night by himself. Dean’s always been there to spell him before.
He’s about to get up when he realizes that he doesn’t know where to go, where the demon could be, who he’s going after next. He lays there, lets his thoughts wander and they go to Bobby, to Ellen, to Jo and Ash and he gets up because he knows if he lets himself, he’ll drown in that sorrow and he can’t, he has to find Dean.
He’s showered and he skips breakfast because he isn’t sure his stomach can handle food yet. It’s a small town but they’ve got a local library with internet connections. Sam doesn’t really know where to start without his links and his research notes but he types “demon possession” into google and works from there. His eyes ache from staring at the computer through the constant sharp migraine and his stomach rolls again. He leaves the computer, heading for the bathroom.
He’s just inside the door when it starts to hit him and he sits so he doesn’t fall.
Another room, another hunter’s home and Sam can see him, pressed against the wall and Dean’s knife at his throat. Another phone in his hand. Sam only met Joshua once, years ago, bigger than life because he was taller than Dean, taller than Dad. He’s not that big anymore and when the demon slits his throat he falls to the ground and he seems so small.
His face is pressed against the cold tile, head pounding and he pushes himself up, grabs in his bag for the aspirin he bought last night but he knows it won’t help. Nothing helps but time and he isn’t getting enough.
The phone rings and he sits against the wall, feet braced against the trash can and his head cradled on his knees, heavy and defeated and it won’t do any good to rush there, the demon will already be gone.
“Haven’t seen Joshua in a while, have you?”
“Dean-” he cuts himself off too late.
“Told you! Told you I was Dean!”
“You are not. You’re nothing like him at all.”
“I’m more like him than you’ll ever know. Do you think Dad’ll be happy to see his friends in hell? Misery does love company.”
“He’s not-”
“Oh he is, but you didn’t know that, did you? Dean never told you. Your dad’s been there all along, Sammy. And now Joshua will join him.”
He’d say no. He’d say don’t. But he’s said them before and none of it does any good. He doesn’t say anything and there’s the sound of a body hitting the floor. Joshua, looking small and broken and dead.
“Five down, Sammy. That’s a lot, right? It’s not enough, not yet.”
Sam doesn’t answer, just breathes into the phone and prays, maybe, begs for this to not be happening.
“Sam? Sammy? You still there?”
A deep breath. “What?” he bites out.
“Do you think he’ll say hi to Dad for us?”
The demon is still giggling when Sam hangs up the phone. Joshua’s home is a couple of hours away but there’s no need to hurry. He grabs cold pop tarts and a questionable cup of coffee at the gas station on the way out of town and he wonders about hell. About where his dad is and what kind of deal Dean made and he adds that to the list of questions he will beat out of Dean if he has to. Someday.
--
Time passes. Days, maybe a week. He doesn’t want to think about how long he’s been doing this, how many phone calls the demon has made, how many people Sam’s watched die.
Six down. Ten down. Twelve down.
Friends, people he hasn’t seen since they were taller than him, since he and Dean fought over shotgun and the last s’more over a campfire. Hunters, all of them, even if he didn’t know that then he can certainly tell now and he knew Dean was good, good at surprising, good at trapping, good at killing, but he didn’t know he was that good. He doesn’t know if he should be proud or not, if it’s Dean that’s good, or the demon. The next time the demon calls he has to bite his tongue so he doesn’t ask.
--
Middle of the night when the phone rings again and Sam had just fallen asleep, Leno over and the wet bar pretty much exhausted.
“Sam?” The voice is frantic, worried, but the breaths are right and for a minute Sam can’t answer, can’t even think. Dean. “Sam, you there?”
“Yeah, yeah. God, it’s good to hear you. How’d you-”
“I didn’t, he’s still in me, squatting like a bug. I can’t. Sam, you have to come get me. You have to find a way to kill me. I don’t care what it takes, I can’t keep doing this.”
Not gonna happen, Sam thinks but doesn’t say, they can fight about it later. He sits up quickly, already pulling on his shoes. He’d never gotten undressed. “Where are you?”
But the breathing changes, subtly, but just enough and Sam knows. “Woo! He’s a strong boy. You didn’t think it was that easy, did you?”
He kicks his shoes off, throws them against the wall and the neighbors holler and it doesn’t make him feel any better. “Damn it, why are you doing this?”
The demon laughs, and it’s Dean’s laugh and Sam doesn’t want to hear it. “Do I need a reason, Sammy? Slaughter is a pastime, a means to an end, a pleasant way to while away idle hours. Finding meaning in slaughter is a useless exercise, you know that. Dean could tell you that.”
The phone bites into Sam’s hand as it clenches, a silent protest. “Don’t talk about my brother.”
“But I am your brother, Sammy.”
“No you’re not.”
“He’s still in here. You know he is. Oh, he doesn’t like me. But I like him. He’s so dark, so many dark delicious places in here. I could play in here for years.”
“You won’t. I’ll get you out.”
“Oh, oh Sammy. That’s precious.”
“I’ve done it before.”
“Not me, you haven’t. My little sister, my little brother, maybe. But I’m smarter than they are and I’m holding all the cards.” A long sigh, and the breaths aren’t right, too harsh, too fast, Sam can’t put his finger on it. He wants to hang up but he wants to see where this goes, he wants Dean again.
“You remember, Sammy, that town we were living in that last year of high school?”
He drops to the bed, fight gone for the moment. “With the pixies,” he says.
“Oh, you’re playing along? Yeah, damn, that was funny. There was this counselor at school. She was pretty hot, had a little thing for Dean. Wanted him to apply to college, said he had the grades. So he did, just to shut her up and because after he did she let him fuck her over her desk. Did he tell you that?”
“No.” He remembers Dean back then, a younger, slightly happier version of himself but he was never carefree, never believed he was immortal, that nothing could touch him because he was young and alive. Nothing like the other kids.
“I did. He got in, Sammy, did he tell you that?”
“No.”
“Dean could have gone to college. Done something with his life. Had something to turn to when the inevitable happens. But he didn’t, Sammy. You know why?”
It waits for a response, breathes along the phone line and Sam listens at how wrong it is, how different and he doesn’t answer, doesn’t say anything because he’s tired of this game where the word that comes to him first is always ‘no’.
“He didn’t want to leave you alone.” And then Dean’s voice drops, sly and slick and disgusting, “Isn’t that sweet?”
“It’s not true,” he says, and wishes he could think of something else to say, something beyond the constant theme of denial, some way to attack instead of defend. But he’s tired and it’s right, it knows the game and he doesn’t.
“But it is, that’s the best part!” It sounds really excited, killing Bobby excited and Sam’s gut rolls again. “You were so young, only fourteen. Too big for your own skin and still falling over yourself and getting in fights with Dad every other day. Who knew what trouble you’d get into with me watching out for you?”
“I could handle myself.” But he remembers that too, walking it off with Dean after another brutal shouting match, as far and as fast as he could from the trailer they’d rented in the small town they were squatting in and Sam never talked after those fights because he was always afraid he’d cry instead. He couldn’t cry in front of Dean. Dean walked with him, rarely ever spoke but he’d put his hand on Sam’s shoulder and it was just when Sam was starting to get taller than Dean, he’d reach up and he’d squeeze the muscle there and say I’m here.
“‘Course you could. You don’t need him, do you? You’ve got your own back, Sammy. What he does for you, it doesn’t mean anything to you, does it?”
“I didn’t say that.” Did he? All the talk about going back to school, about killing the demon and going back to his life, is that what Dean heard?
“You don’t have to. You know, four years later when you got into college? He never believed you’d go. Up until the day you left, running away while he and Dad were out? Man, that’s cold. That’s gratitude, Sammy. That’s love.”
Cold knots form in the pit of his stomach, sick and queasy and he might throw up. They lie, sure, but they’ll tell the truth just to fuck with your head. “You don’t know anything.”
“I do. I know so much more than you think. So much more.”
Sam hangs up but it isn’t soon enough and he wonders how much Dean will remember, how much Sam’ll have to apologize for, explain, ask about later.
--
Sam's had a migraine for three weeks now. The visions never seem to end, one after another as Dean- no, not Dean, the demon- kills everyone they've ever known. Thirteen, fourteen down.
The fifteenth person isn’t a hunter.
Different motel, different city, but the pain behind his eyes is still the same when it hits him, knocks him to his knees on the tile in the bathroom. Mike. They saw him the last time they went home, the first and last time Sam ever saw his mother. Big mechanic’s arms, he’s strong in that ‘beat your ass in a bar fight’ way but he doesn’t have anything on Dean, on the demon.
Mike still doesn’t even know who Dean is, doesn’t see the little boy he gave ice cream to in the middle of the night when he woke up screaming about fire and death.
The phone rings.
“Sammy, you remember Mike? He changed your diaper a couple of times, when Dad was too drunk to do it himself.”
“Mom had just died, asshole.”
“Oh, name calling, Sammy? For that you don’t get to say goodbye.” Another slice, another thud, and it’s sick how routine all of this is beginning to be.
“Why Mike?” he says, swallowing down protest and bile. “He wasn’t even a hunter.”
“You didn’t think this was only about hunters, did you? This is about you, Sammy. You and me here. Just wanted to get your hunter friends first before they caught wind.”
“There are other hunters, other people who could find you.”
The demon snorts. “I don’t think so, Sammy. You didn’t tell anyone. Dean knows you didn’t tell anyone, and let me tell you, that tastes sweet. You could find me if you really wanted to find me, but they couldn’t. You and Dean, you ran with the best and the brightest, you know? Heads of the class, all the smart kids have to stick together.”
“So the rest of us are too dumb to find you?”
“The rest of THEM, Sammy. And I didn’t say it, you did.”
It’s like talking to Dean sometimes, and what does that say? Does the demon sound like Dean? Or does Dean sound like a demon?
“Fifteen down.”
--
He waits to burn Mike. Civilians like to find their loved ones, to bury them and let them be at peace, as much as they can. Lots of blood and a missing body would stir up more trouble, and he can’t burn the house with Mike’s family inside. Can’t leave it though, victims of murder make restless spirits, hunters or not.
He attends the funeral. Watches Patricia, Mike’s widow, sob and cry and grab hold of their mostly grown children. Watches them lower the casket into the ground. He doesn’t remember Mike, not really, except for their one trip home. Dean knew him better, knew what flavor of ice cream he preferred, told him about watching Mike’s big TV, which was way bigger than their old TV, up way past bed time because there was a lot Dad didn’t care about in the beginning.
He digs Mike’s grave up that night, salts and burns his body, says goodbye for him and for Dean.
--
Later that night, new hotel, new shower, and he’d washed the dirt from the cemetery off when the phone rings again. He knows who it is, no one else calls him anymore.
“You still up, Sammy? How was the funeral?”
He doesn’t have the energy to be angry, to be sad and when he’s tired enough, numb enough, he can almost pretend he’s talking to Dean. “Fine.”
“I’m really beginning to enjoy our late night chats.”
“Yeah, me too.”
“Don’t lie to me, Sammy. I know you better than anyone.”
“You don’t. Dean does.”
“Not so, young grasshopper. I know you. You think we don’t watch you? You think we don’t watch all of you? The special children, yes, blah blah plans I could honestly care less. The hunters, though, we love watching you. Like a big soap opera.”
“You just killed off half your cast.”
“Yeah, they’ll be pretty pissed for that, but this show is so much better. Point is, I know you. So does Dean. And I know him.”
“Following that convoluted logic-”
“Both of us in here are big fans. I have another secret for you, Sammy. Want to hear it?”
“No.”
“Yes you do. Lying again, Sammy, how does anyone ever trust you? You’ll want to know this. It’s about Jessica.”
Years and hearing her name can still get to him. He sits up, a hot rush of pain and anger and fire in his chest. “What?” he says, tries to say, but his mouth is dry.
The demon hears it, knows and there’s glee in his voice, probably a fucking song in his heart when he says, “Dean was glad she died.”
“He wouldn’t-” But the question is there, which is all it wanted in the first place. The rush turns to more cold angry stones in his stomach and he wonders why every conversation leaves him wanting to puke.
“Oh, he was sorry you hurt. But you think he really wanted to leave you there? To drop you off and say goodbye?”
“Of course not, but he knew I wanted-” A life. Law school. Something Dean wasn’t in, couldn’t touch, somewhere he couldn’t follow. He’d chosen his life and Dean wasn’t allowed. The stones in his stomach are heavier, weighing him down into the mattress and the scratchy sheets.
“You’re really not that naive? Really?” He’s disappointed the demon and he can’t tell if that makes him happy or sad. “Maybe you are. He hated her, Sammy. He hated her for taking you away from him. And when she died he danced inside because you were angry enough to come with him again. Got you back in the car, didn’t it?”
“You’re a lying son of a bitch.”
“You should really stop bringing my mama into our little conversations. She’s your mama too.”
--
The demon calls him every time.
Cassie welcomed him with open arms. Sarah asked where Sam was, before a look in the demon's eye had her backing away, attempting to shut the door.
Seventeen down. Twenty down. Twenty-four down. Visions bleed into reality and the only way he can tell the difference anymore is that he can never reach Dean in time, can't put out a hand to stop him, to help whoever it is on the wrong end of a hunting knife. Can't warn them in time.
Sam attends some of the funerals, not all. He can’t look in Cassie’s mother’s face and tell her it’ll be okay, that he’s sorry. He digs up a lot of graves and burns a lot of bodies and he never gets caught, no one ever roams the graveyards the way he and Dean do.
Pain sharpens behind his eyes, images playing across his retinas, frolicking children with a maypole of barbed wire. A face he recognizes, another door opened to Dean because Sam can't remember everyone they've talked to and his phone list only gets him so far. Another person dies.
The vision fades, blood and death replaced by ugly wallpaper, another hotel room Sam can't afford to waste time in. His phone rings and the sound batters against his eardrums, sharp and shrill.
"Missouri," he says, doesn’t even wait for her to identify herself. Her face in the vision, her death he just witnessed. "Dean-"
“He's coming for me."
"You know, right? Get out of there.”
"I can't run, Sam. I've seen it; I've known all along he was meant to be my end. I never saw the where or the why, but I understand that now. But I want you to tell him."
“Tell him what?"
"That it isn't his fault, sugar."
"He'll never buy that."
"It doesn't matter. He just needs to hear it. Sam? You won't have to burn my bones. Don't come here. I'm not holding on to anything. I've known for so long, I've made my peace."
"Missouri, wait, wait, I'm coming to you. We can stop him."
"There's no time, he's already close. Very close. You want to know how this will end, but I can't tell you. It isn't written yet. Listen, will you do me a favor? Call the authorities. Tell them where I am. I don't want to sit around here for days, decaying in the heat. I want to be beautiful in my casket."
"I'll do it-"
"You're going to say you're sorry, and I'm going to tell you that it isn't your fault either, but you won't believe me any more than he will. Look out for each other. Remember you're all you've got."
"But we can-"
"You should know by now there are some things you can't change, no matter how much time you're given. I knew the minute John introduced me to his boys, but it never changed anything. I love Dean like I love you, and what's coming isn't him. Remember to tell him, Sam."
Sam can't form words anymore, mouth open on a silent wail for all he never knew, and in the quiet he hears the demon coming, opening the door in Missouri's house.
"You tell him," she says, and hangs up the phone.
Another hole driven into another wall and maybe the skin on his knuckles will never come back. Who's left? Who's left to lose? Soon the answer will be no one. No one but Dean.
His phone rings again. “Missouri?” Mocking laughter and he clenches his hand around the phone. Anger, hatred are a knot in his chest. “You. Fuck you. WHY?”
“What a potty mouth. Me, Sammy. Did she call you? She really is a psychic!”
“Shut up. Just shut up! You knew she was.” He tries to breathe around the knot and it’s so hard. He’s gasping and he doesn’t realize he’s crying until the tears hit his hand, clenched around the phone. She knew, she’d known all this time and even then, they couldn’t stop it. Sam wouldn’t be able to stop it. Nothing he could do, no way to help Dean. Useless and futile, all he can do is follow after, clean up the demon’s messes and wait for the end.
“Maybe,” the demon says. “People get lucky all the time.”
His breath hitches when he speaks, he can’t hide the tears. “She was real,” he says quietly, because it matters.
“Aw, are you, are you crying, Sammy? That’s so sweet!”
Sam hangs up the phone. Familiar routine. He calls the non-emergency line in Lawrence, gives them a fake name and Missouri’s name and address. He can do one thing right tonight.
He stares at the ceiling till sunrise.
On to part two