Demons Made Me Spill My Guts Like a Girl (2/3)
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
Disclaimer: If I owned them, it would be a different kind of show and would have to run on cable.
The phone rings again late in the morning, a chirruping song from the front seat of Bobby’s truck and Sam answers, eyes still on the road. “Yeah?”
“Sam?”
“Dean? That you?” He jerks the wheel to the side, tires skidding as he stops on the shoulder.
“Yeah. This is hard, I can’t do this long. You have to find me. You have to kill me if you can’t get this out of me.”
“It won’t do any good. We pushed Meg out a window and the demon held her together. The only way is to exorcize it.”
“Find a way, Sam. I can’t do this for much longer.”
“Where are you?”
But again, as before, his breathing changes and the squatting evil thing inside him takes over again. “Still not gonna tell you that, Sammy. It’s not time yet.”
“Are you. Are you letting him take over?”
The demon chuckles but it doesn’t answer and it doesn’t matter anyway.
Sam punches the dash, knuckles cracked and already bleeding. “Why? Why are you doing this to Dean and not me?”
“You know what, Sammy? I like you. And I’m really going to answer. You’ve been done. Your brother loves you, he loves you so much it’s disgusting. He loves you so much that you could kill everyone in the world, everyone, Sammy, and he wouldn’t blame you. He’d try to stop you, sure, just like he did before, but blame? He’d only blame himself for not stopping you. For not stopping whoever is possessing you. Funny how the human mind works.”
“So you make him feel guilty.”
“Oh Sammy, it’s so much more than that.” He giggles and Sam’s stomach rolls, lead butterflies and maybe a second visit from breakfast. “He’s not just hurting other people. He’s hurting you. He’s making you worry, making you cry, making you clean up the messes of your friends that he leaves behind. Well, not that last one, the psychic, but still. It’s coming, it isn’t over yet. And Dean will never forgive himself for that. Isn’t this fun?”
“You’re sick.”
“Nope, I’m demonic, boy. And guess what? I’m coming after you now.”
The demon hangs up before Sam can and he sits in Bobby’s truck on the side of the road, sun shining through the windshield onto his bleeding hands. A car passes, the first he’s seen in hours, and it jolts him, knocks him out of wherever he was. He’s outwardly calm and collected as he gets out of the truck and grabs the tire iron from the tool box in the back. He grips it tightly, like a baseball bat, like Dean taught him years ago on a sandlot in some small town and he’s anything but calm, anything but collected as he lets it fly against Bobby’s truck, driving hard dents into the side of the bed. Each time he connects it sends a ripple of pain up his arms into his shoulders and he grits his teeth and keeps hitting, keeps going until he can’t anymore, until the tire iron falls from his fingers and he drops to his knees on the side of the road. He rests his forehead against the truck, his skin catches on a jagged hole and his tears, unchecked, drop from his chin to soak the dust at his knees.
--
It’s hard to run when he doesn’t know what’s behind him. Where it is. And he runs because he still doesn’t know how to save Dean, how to get it out of him, if it’s even possible. And if it all adds up to make him feel like a cowardly piece of shit, he ignores it and drives on.
Small town in the panhandle of Texas, they all look the same after a while. Big enough for a 7-11, too small for a Wal-Mart. He checks into the first motel he sees, lays down the credit card. He walks across the street to the gas station and spends the last of the change he found in Bobby’s truck on a bottle of coke and a pack of gum. The girl behind the counter smiles at him, she’d be interested if he gave her half a glance, but he’s pretty sure any part of him he could give to her is broken now. He nods, gives a half smile, all he’s really capable of, and leaves the store.
He sees her again that night, vision pounding against his eyes and it’s quick, the demon doesn’t bother to taunt her first, play it out. Doesn’t even call Sam when it kills her, like it doesn’t care who she is, she’s just another number to add to the total. Like all life isn’t precious.
Dean is there when he opens his eyes and it’s so familiar for a minute that he falls into Dean’s hands, it’s such a huge fucking relief to see him and he wants to tell Dean about the horrible dream he can’t seem to wake up from, but the hands tighten around his arm, then around his neck, and the headlights of a passing car cross his face and it isn’t Dean’s face. Or it is, but not his expression at all.
The demon’s on top of him, pressing him into the bed and cutting off his air and he grabs at its wrists but it’s stronger than he is. He bucks up, trying to throw it off but it moves with him and laughs a little, a lot, before it bends over him, hands tight around his neck, knees tight against his hips.
“You saw her, huh?” it says, face down next to Sam’s, harsh breath, a rhythm that isn’t Deans, against his neck. “Her pretty face. You could have bagged her, Sammy, I’m disappointed in you.” It sits up a little, hands still locked around his throat but it’s face is above his, mouth brushing against Sam’s face when it asks, “More notice than usual, isn’t it?” like it expects him to answer.
Shit, it hasn’t killed her yet. He pulls at the hands on his neck but it’s getting harder. His chest is tight, stars in his eyes and he wonders if this is it, the end, if its going to kill him now and leave Dean alone. He struggles harder at that thought, but it’s too late.
“Good night, Sammy,” it says, as his vision goes black.
--
Pounding on the door wakes him up the next day, a grouchy voice telling him to leave or pay for another day. He leaves.
He catches a glimpse of the bruises around his neck in the rearview as he climbs into the truck, a memento of his first face-to-face with the thing that’s been occupying his brother’s body for weeks. (Months? He wishes he could remember.)
He drives up into Colorado, no plan, no destination. He wants to get away from the girl, from the demon, from the pain and the guilt and not knowing what to do. He’s still running.
He stops for gas once, waits in line for the men’s and lets a guy with two antsy kids go ahead of him. The guy smiles in thanks and Sam just nods.
Another small town and he only stops for the night when he can’t drive anymore for his eyes shutting. He’s afraid he’ll nod off completely and end up in a ditch. Another crappy motel with cheap carpets and hard pillows. He doesn’t remember going to bed.
He sees the guy (but not the two kids) in a vision that night, it’s all becoming sickly and sadly familiar.
He’s up and out the door before the vision really fades and he thinks that’s why he doesn’t see the demon at first, Dean’s body lounging casually against the wall outside his door.
He’s up against the wall, the casual gone and taut lines replace it, pressed against him, all along his length. Dean’s arm is against his neck, elbow pressing into the bruises from last night. “Going somewhere?” it asks.
Sam looks up, away, anywhere but at this thing twisting Dean’s face.
“Thirty-one down. That’s a lot, right?”
The light’s beginning to waver and it might be the lack of oxygen, but Sam’s pretty sure it’s tears.
“Is that enough to make Dean a mass murderer? What’s the cut off for that?”
Sam looks down at that. No, he mouths around gritted teeth.
“What was that?” It grins, delighted to be acknowledged and Sam looks away again, up over its head and he’s never been happier to be taller than Dean, to be able to look away without effort, because it’s getting harder and harder to move.
“He used to be angry in here, Sammy. He was so angry at first. I loved that, it felt good. He’s not angry anymore, but it’s okay. I like this better.”
His vision blacks again but before it goes completely he sees the demon twisting Dean’s face into a grin, a horrid, fake, unreal grin. It’s the last thing he sees.
--
Tapping on his foot wakes him up. A policeman is crouched at his feet. “Were you mugged, son?”
He sits up quickly, he doesn’t want to talk to this guy, to talk to anyone, to even look at someone. They might be next.
“No.”
“What happened at your neck there?”
“Fell down the stairs.”
The cop sighs, stands up and looks down at him in that disapproving way every law man seems to have. “All right, you want to press charges against the stairs, you let me know. You smell clean, just stay out of trouble.”
Sam wants to laugh, but he doesn’t.
--
On the road again, down into Arizona. He likes the western states for their big long stretches of open road, nothing around for miles and no one to see. He checks the rearview compulsively and he keeps expecting to see the Impala, keeps expecting the demon to show up, to run him off the road, to finish it somehow. Maybe it’ll be up to him. He doesn’t want to think about that.
He stops way past nightfall in a tiny town, so small they only have one motel and Sam almost drives on when he catches a glimpse of the tiny grandmotherly type behind the counter. He tries not to look at her, he tries not to talk to her, but it’s hard to check into a motel without doing either.
Maybe it’s the bruises he didn’t bother to hide. Maybe it’s the circles under his eyes, broken skin on his knuckles, the way he sways against the counter with the effort to remain upright. She notices something and presses her hand to his cheek. He looks at her, right into her eyes, and she smiles. “This too shall pass,” she says, thumb stroking along his cheekbone.
Sam pulls away, leaves the key on the counter and stumbles out of the office. No, he thinks. NONONONONONO. He knows who’s next.
He sits in the truck all night, a little away from the office. Close enough that he can stop the demon when it shows up, far enough away that she won’t see him out there. He tries, he tries so hard to stay awake, to not doze off in the long hours as he watches her move around the office, pick up the romance novel she’d been thumbing through when he came in.
The door he’s leaning against is wrenched open and he’d fall out but the demon catches him, shoves him back inside and holds him down while it ties his hands to the wheel of the truck. Just holds him, one-handed, and Sam can’t tell if he’s really that close to the end of his rope, or if the demon really is that strong.
“Try getting out of that one, kiddo,” it says, beaming at him, face inches away. “She’ll be thirty-two. Just one more.” It leans forward a bit, kisses him on the cheek before it pulls back and shuts the door.
He pulls, yanks against the ropes holding his wrists down but they’re too tight. He gets his teeth around one of them, tries to pull it out of its knot and it might come that way, but not soon enough. He’s still pulling on it, working on it when he hears the rumble of the Impala as it drives away and he looks up, through the office window. The pool of blood spills out the door.
He’s too tired to cry anymore, though he would, even though he didn’t know her. He rests his forehead against the steering wheel for a few long moments and doesn’t think about anything, about the demon or Dean or the last person it’s going to kill. His mind is empty and blank and free and he tugs at the last knot on the rope, gets his hands free. He starts the truck and drives away.
--
He’s on the side of the road before the next one hits. Another face he might recognize if he bothered to look anyone in the face today, another person sacrificed to the demon’s need. She’s blond this time, pretty and Sam says Jessica, and he knows he didn’t see her.
He’s holding his phone, waiting for it to ring, still sitting on the shoulder of the road. It rings.
“Thirty-three, baby brother. I’m so done.”
“Done?”
“Yeah. Done. That’s a good number, right? Look it up, Sammy. It’s got all kinds of symbolism, since I know that’s your thing.”
“I know.”
“You’ve been running from me. Don’t you want to play? I’m coming for you now, Sammy. Not just for fun this time. It’s time we finished this. I know where you are. You know I do.”
And he does know, of course it can. He still has the bruises to prove it. He braces himself. He’ll never be ready.
--
It catches him again in New Mexico, some tiny little town off the map that Sam can’t remember the name of. Doesn’t knock this time, just unlocks the door and it must have charmed the clerk into giving it the spare key.
“I’m home, sweetheart,” it says.
Sam tries to make a break for it but the demon has Dean’s gun so Sam doesn’t fight (too much). The fewer memories Dean has later of forcing Sam to do anything the better, and the demon seems disappointed but Sam isn’t about to give it the pleasure.
It gets him in the Impala and it’s weird and wrong that something else is driving, that something else is in their car. It looks over at him, at the disgust and anger on his face and it laughs a little before it punches him once, twice, knocking his head against the window and Sam blacks out.
--
Awake again, he’s strung up against a wall, hands above his head and his feet tied down. The demon is in front of him, on its knees and cutting his pants off and Sam hopes this is something Dean won’t remember later.
It doesn’t cut him deep at first, just little nicks on his arms and legs and one longer one across his belly. Enough that it stings and burns and blood drips into little pools, but nothing that won’t heal on its own and Sam wonders what’s next, disgust and fear and worry a cold knot in his belly.
“How well do you know Dean?” it says, smirk on Dean’s face that isn’t his.
“I know everything.”
“Oh?” it says, delighted with the answer. “Everything?”
“Everything that matters.”
It gets up in his face then, presses tight against him and its breath (Dean’s breath) gusts over his cheek when it speaks. “You know everything, huh? Everything that ‘matters’?” Hands on his chest, Dean’s blunt fingertips digging into his ribs. The knife cuts into his side, the cut is deeper than the ones before. “Do you know that Dean wants you? Does that matter? I don’t mean he just wants you around now, Sammy, I mean he wants you in the Biblical sense. Beast with two backs and all that.” He presses forward, lips grazing Sam’s ear as it whispers “your brother wants to fuck you, Sammy.”
Sam jerks against the ropes, turns his head but there’s no getting away, no shutting him up. “He doesn’t.”
“Oh, he does. I do. I wake up in the middle of the night, Sammy, and you’re right there, in the next bed, warm and soft and sleeping and I get hard, thinking about you, about your tight ass and those miles and miles of skin.”
It’s got the knife against his throat, making cuts, one after another into the skin and it leans forward to lick at the blood that spills down his chest. “Nothing to say, Sammy? No innocent protestations?” It leans back and bats its eyes, voice high and mocking. “He does not! How could you ever say such a thing!” Slick grin and its eyes narrow, Dean’s green gaze focused on Sam’s again. “That’s it, Sammy. The last thing Dean’s been hiding from you. Can you believe it?” It pushes back from the wall, spreads its arms out wide. “I mean, can you fucking believe it all?”
“Is that what this was about? The whole time? You spilling Dean’s guts to me?” Sam thinks of smoke, digging graves and the weight of his friends on his shoulders. “Why kill all those people if you just wanted to fuck with our heads?”
“Answered your own question, didn’t you? I did it because I could, Sammy. You’ve got no friends to run to now, no one to help you. No one to stand with you when the end comes. No one but each other, and I think I broke this one. And I already told you, killing people is fun.” He leans forward again, breath hot and sweaty against Sam’s neck and it whispers, “Dean thought so too,” before leaning back again, giggling.
Head down, he stares at the floor. He can’t watch it now, watch it move Dean’s body.
Quick movements, and it’s there again, pressed up against him and Sam brings his head up and away. “Back to more important matters,” it whispers, lips pressed against his neck. “I bet you’d look good, pressed against sweaty sheets. Your mouth on my cock.” It shudders against him, Dean’s dick is hard against his belly and Sam tries to pull away but there’s a wall behind him, nowhere to go. “You have to have thought of it, Sammy,” it says, backing away again. “I am one good looking guy.”
“Stop talking like you’re him,” he grits out. “You’re not him.”
The demon slides forward, dragging Dean’s feet through Sam’s blood. “I am him,” it says, “in every way that matters. I know Dean. I’ve watched Dean. I’m IN Dean, kiddo.”
Sam leans his head back, eyes closed so he doesn’t have to watch it. His head is pounding, sudden and ferocious and he blinks, trying to focus. “You’re not, you’re not him. You’ll never be him, no matter what you do.”
Something flares in its eyes that Sam can’t decipher and it growls, teeth bared and reaches forward with the knife, cutting into Sam’s chest, under his ribs, deep and hard and Sam grits his teeth, bites back on a shout and everything in him wants to cry but it’s Dean and he can’t. The drops of blood are bigger, the pool is bigger, and Sam wonders how much he can lose and still survive this.
Its hands on him again, rough strokes over the shallow cuts on his chest and stomach and its fingers clench around his hips, dragging his lower body forward until he’s pressed against Dean’s body.
“You just don’t get it, junior,” it says, slow rotation of its hips and Sam clenches his teeth. The demon is talking, a low rumble of noise in his ear, all the dirty, filthy things it says Dean wants to do but Sam can’t concentrate and all he hears is buzzing, like bees trapped inside his brain. He almost doesn’t notice when the demon’s voice stops, when it shoves away from him in a hasty, clumsy maneuver and Sam opens his eyes and Dean’s face is panicked, just ridiculously scared and then, then it’s Dean. Dean looks at him from his own face and says “it’s scared, Sam. Is it, God, did I do that to you?” Dean reaches his hands out, fingers skirting the cuts on Sam’s torso. He snatches his hands away and backs up, arms wrapped around his middle, hunched over like it pains him too. “He’s angry,” he says, teeth clenched and he falls to his knees, still hunched over his stomach and Sam is watching, slack-jawed, eyes blinking against the gray when Dean’s head tips back and the demon leaves in a rush of black smoke.
Dean slumps forward again, when the stream ends and the demon is gone. He shakes, Sam can see it from across the room, hunched forward and shaking and he vomits until there’s nothing more, only dry heaves he can’t control.
Sam pulls at the ropes holding him, struggling against them for the first time but they’re tight, they’re really tight and that’s one thing Dean Winchester has always been amazing at, tying people up.
“Dean,” he tries, voice broken and husky but it’s enough, Dean’s head snaps up and Sam can see his eyes from across the room, clear and bright and its like Sam is the only thing he can see, the only thing that matters now. The only thing that ever mattered.
“God, Sammy,” he says and Sam flinches at the name (it isn’t Dean’s name for him anymore, it’s the demon’s), at Dean’s face and Dean’s voice and he can barely hold his head up and Dean’s there, warm hands on his cold ones, cutting the ropes away. Sam slumps to the floor. He opens his eyes later, seconds or minutes and Dean’s hunched over him, shirt off and pressed against his chest.
His eyes are on the shirt, on Sam’s chest and the blood and Sam reaches up, touches his arm. “Dean,” he says, but his tongue is dry and it might not sound like that at all.
Dean looks at him, grabs Sam’s hand and presses it against the shirt, held tight against the wound. “Can you hold that there?” he asks. “I can get some stuff from the car.”
Sam nods. “Water too.”
“Yeah.” He watches Dean walk out of the room and he almost calls out, almost asks Dean to take him too and he watches the door till Dean comes back, bags in one hand and a water bottle in the other. It’s obvious Sam was watching for him and he can’t read the look on Dean’s face but it makes him sad, makes him hurt worse than the cuts. Dean uncaps the water bottle and hands it to him, puts his hands back on the t-shirt.
“Drink, we’ll fix this in a minute.”
Sam downs half the bottle and gives it back. Dean takes a few sips, rinses his mouth and recaps it, sets it aside. He lifts the shirt up a bit and curses. “Needs stitches. What did I do to you?”
Sam shakes his head, hand on Dean’s again and he says “not you” but Dean’s closed down again, face cold and hard and a little too like the demon’s. Sam looks away but the pool of blood, his blood is next to him. He looks back at Dean, it’s easier. “Let’s get out of here,” he says and Dean’s face changes, softer and sadder and he looks at Sam like he’s nuts.
“I don’t want to stay here,” Sam says. “I’m fine, we can go.”
“You’re not fine.”
“I’ve had worse.”
“Sam-”
It’s tangible, the weight on his shoulders, on Dean’s shoulders, the air between them heavy with everything that’s happened. Sam has been hurt worse, but Dean’s never hurt him like this before.
“Please.”
Dean pulls himself together, pulls Sam together, gets him clothes and helps him stand, hand still pressed tightly against Sam’s chest and it’s like any other fight, any other time one of them got hurt but it’s not like any other time at all.
“You should lay down,” Dean says when Sam tries to get in the front seat. He shrugs, lets himself be led to the back, sprawls across the seat and tucks his legs against the door, his head propped against his bag.
Dean grabs something from the trunk and goes back inside the building for a few long moments and Sam has his eye on the door until Dean comes back out, squirting lighter fluid behind him. He lights a match and flicks it at the open door, stands for a few moments and watches the fire catch, spread quickly along the floor and up the walls. Sam watches Dean.
He watches when Dean turns back to the car, flicks his eyes to the back where Sam is and then down, eyes on the ground as he walks back, drops into the front seat. The rumble of the engine is familiar and this is right, him and Dean in the car together, and even if they don’t know where they’re going, where they’ve been, or what the hell they’ll do, Sam can’t help feeling like nothing can hurt him now and he falls asleep watching the back of Dean’s head.
--
Sam opens his eyes again when the car stops. Dean catches his eye in the rearview. “It’s the first place I saw, we need to get you fixed up. I’ll go get a room.”
Sam nods because there aren’t a lot of other options. He wants to be far, far away but he also wants to let Dean fix him, stitch him up and put a bandage on. Maybe Dean needs to.
Dean comes back, keys in hand and he helps Sam out of the back, grabs the bags and leads him to their room. He still has the flask they always keep for this purpose and he pours whiskey down Sam’s throat, enough that he only flinches a little when Dean starts to sew him up, enough that he has to bite his tongue, really bite it until it bleeds to keep himself from rambling, from spilling everything he hated about the time that Dean was gone.
Dean’s stitches have never been the neatest, too impatient but that’s the best because it’s quick and clean. He tapes gauze down over the stitches, over the shallower cuts on Sam’s neck and stomach, arms and legs. He uses the rough white hotel towels to clean Sam up the best he can, scrubbing at the streaks of blood, rubbing over the stitches like he can erase them, the reasons for them and it hurts, it hurts more than the stitches, more than the cuts did when the demon gave them to him, and Sam has to stop him, pull the towel away when he’s clean, when it’s done.
“Sorry,” Dean says, and won’t meet his eyes. He starts to get up but Sam catches his hand, his arm and won’t let him up. “Sam, what?”
“Don’t go,” he says.
“I’m not.”
“Don’t go.”
Dean’s face isn’t closed anymore, not cold, it’s close to broken and he works at something in his mouth, like he can’t say it but it needs to be said. He touches just the tips of his fingers to the bruises ringing Sam’s neck, to the tape and the gauze and to bare skin, parts the demon hadn’t gotten to yet. He can’t look at Sam when he says, “How can you. How can you even look at me? Let me touch you?”
Sam tightens his grip, fingers digging into Dean’s skin. “Stupid.”
Dean laughs a little, but it isn’t a real laugh.
“You’re my brother,” Sam says, tugging on Dean’s arm some more. Dean gives up but it was never a real fight and he lays next to Sam and Sam still won’t let go of his arm. He watches Dean watch him until he can’t keep his eyes open anymore, but he never lets go. He listens to Dean breathing, to the soft susurrations in and out, in and out, the rhythm of his life. It’s the last thing he hears before he falls asleep.
-
He opens his eyes and it’s still dark, or dark again. His hand is still clenched around Dean’s arm and Dean’s eyes are open but they’re not looking at him. He loosens his grip a bit but doesn’t let go. Dean shifts his gaze, acknowledges Sam’s awake, but won’t look at him.
His chest hurts but he doesn’t want to say anything about that. His head feels weird too, empty somehow and it takes him a really long time to realize it feels weird because it doesn’t hurt, no pain, no migraines, no visions for hours, maybe days. He brings his free hand up, taps against his head experimentally. Nothing.
“Brain still there?”
He doesn’t laugh, but he doesn’t think Dean expected him to. “Dean?” he whispers.
“What?”
Sam tries to shift around to his side, but moving his torso pulls at his stitches and that hurts so he stops. He settles for turning his head, owl-like, and watching Dean as he asks, “What did you mean, back there, when you said it was scared? Or angry?” And because he’s watching he sees Dean flinch a little, his jaw clenches, teeth grinding and he’d pull away probably but Sam won’t let go of him.
A few moments and just like that, the fight goes out of him and Sam’s never seen his brother look defeated before. He hates it. “The yellow eyed bastard was angry, screaming at the one in my head, that one was scared. Angry because I was hurting you, maybe killing you, and it has other plans.”
Red flags in Sam’s head and it’s starting to get a little fuzzy around the edges, sleep dragging at him again but he knows enough still to say, “Hey, improper use of pronoun there. Not you. The demon, not you.”
Dean inhales, exhales slowly and Sam listens to it, the familiar rhythm of Dean. “Yeah, sure,” he says.
Sam knows Dean doesn’t believe him yet but he’s too tired to argue. Sleep drags at him again and his fingers tighten again on Dean’s arm and he gives in.
-
He opens his eyes again. Daylight, but the curtains are drawn so it’s muted. His chest still hurts.
He turns his head, looks for Dean, and realizes his hand is clenched in sheets, not skin. He panics, hand scrambling in the sheet as if Dean is hiding somehow.
“Relax, Sammy. I just had to pee.” The voice is behind him but he doesn’t turn over to look.
Sick combination: the name, the sarcasm, the tight, panicked knot in his chest. He shudders and his gut clenches and he tries to tell himself to stop, that it’s Dean and not something else.
He sits up slowly, hand on his chest and Dean walks a wide circle around him, sits on the unused bed, close enough that Sam scoots forward a little and their knees bump in the empty space between them. He has a ringed bruise on his arm where Sam held him all night.
“You’re scared of me.”
And he is, a little. Not of Dean, exactly, but of what Dean might become again, of what he was. “I’m not,” he says, and maybe he’s trying to convince himself as well.
Dean’s face is still skeptical, pain and anger and guilt etched in the sharp angles.
Sam brings his hand up and in a gesture that neither one of them would have accepted before, he smooths his hand over Dean’s cheek, fingers curling around the nape of his neck.
“I’ll show you I’m not,” he says.
Dean meets his eyes and they’re the clear green he remembers, though he’s never seen this expression before. There’s guilt there, disbelief, doubt, unhappiness, a whole mess of negativity that Sam wants, needs, to erase. New things, strange things and it’s a little like having to rewrite their language, the unspoken meaning between them because it’s all become different somehow.
Dean is absolutely still for a few minutes and it reminds Sam of a deer caught in bright lights, a rabbit that scents a hunter, something vulnerable and wild. Sam doesn’t move either, hand still on Dean’s face, gaze still locked, and Sam’s heart is pounding but it isn’t fear this time. It’s something else.
Dean moves first, jerks his head away from Sam’s grasp and holds out his hand. “I also grabbed these.” He drops two pills in Sam’s hand, antibiotics from the small arsenal of prescription drugs they keep on hand, just in case. “For the knife wound,” he says.
Sam shakes them around a minute, like dice he’s about to throw. He looks at Dean still, considering, until Dean stands and starts rummaging through their bags, sorting through clothes and weapons. “You going to take them?” he asks.
Sam shrugs, pops the pills in his mouth and dry swallows them, gagging a little at the sharp feeling as they scrape along their way to his stomach. He grabs the water bottle on the night stand as an afterthought and washes them down the rest of the way.
“We should move on,” he says, recapping the bottle.
Dean shrugs, still rummaging through the bags and Sam wonders exactly how much there is in there to organize. “Whatever you want.”
“I want more distance between us and that room.”
Dean stops for a minute, eyes on his hands and Sam doesn’t need to specify what room. Dean knows. “Me too,” he says.
Sam showers carefully (with the door open, so he can hear Dean in the main room), not getting the stitches any wetter than he has to but it’s all kinds of difficult, since they’re in the middle of his damn chest. He’s light headed by the time he’s done, movements slow and jerky and maybe standing this long was a bad idea. He can’t remember the last time he was hurt bad enough that he couldn’t shower.
He takes some painkillers in the bathroom where Dean can’t see him and pulls on his jeans. He really needs to do some laundry, everything from the bag in the Impala smells like dirty socks. He digs through Dean’s bag, comes up with a bunch of clothing he doesn’t recognize from the many, many times he’s done the wash.
He’s holding up a couple of shirts (and, honestly, name brand? Dean?) when Dean says “I stole those.”
Sam looks up, Dean’s eyes are glued to the TV screen. “You mean, it did.”
“Whatever, Sam, they’re unpaid- for merchandise.”
“What happened to your other stuff?”
“Threw it away.”
And yeah, Sam can’t really see the demon hanging out in a laundromat either. He picks one of the new shirts and rips the tag off, slips it over his head. “You ready?”
Dean clicks the TV off. “Yeah,” he says. Sam grabs the keys from the dresser and Dean doesn’t protest for once. He grabs their bags and follows Sam out the door, into the sunshine.
--
Sam drives until it’s dark and then way past it. He was with the demon the first time he rode in the car since everything happened, and asleep the second time and it should feel stranger to him that he missed the car but it doesn’t; he grew up in here and it’s home as much as Dean is. He pats the steering wheel and feels like he understands Dean a little bit more.
“Dude, were you just, petting the car?”
“No. Maybe. I missed it.”
Dean was laughing a minute ago, but that shuts him up faster than anything and Sam watches out of the corner of his eye as he stills, turns back to the road in front of him. “Yeah,” he says.
“Dean, I didn’t mean-”
“It’s fine.”
“It’s not fine. It isn’t your fault.”
“Yeah,” Dean says again.
--
Sam drives up into the mountains, small, winding back roads through tall trees and long stretches of empty dark. He stops finally at a small, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it town boasting a hotel and, further down the main strip, a small collection of cabins for rent. Sam pulls up in front of the double wide that serves the cabins as an office.
He turns the car off, tosses the keys to Dean. “I’ll be right back,” he says.
And he leaves Dean alone with the keys and the Impala. He hopes Dean gets the message.
He comes back with a small key dangling from a whittled grizzly bear and Dean’s leaning against the hood of the car, waiting.
“Number two,” Sam says, shaking the key. “Laundromat across the street.”
Sam tries to grab his bag but Dean takes it from him, carefully avoids touching Sam’s hand. “Don’t rip the stitches.” He follows Sam to the cabin and Sam unlocks the door and steps back because Dean always walks in first. Old habits die hard.
Dean pushes the door to their one-room cabin open and Sam peers over his shoulder. They’ve stayed in nicer places, sure, and the dead animals peering at them from every available inch of wall space might be a little creepy, but it was cheap and it was their’s for as long as they needed it.
“Home sweet home,” Dean says as he steps across the threshold and drops the bags on the floor.
Sam shrugs. “They rent by the month.”
Surprise and a little bit of worry in Dean’s voice. “We’re not staying here that long.”
And Sam stops, staring straight at Dean because if Dean doesn’t understand this, it isn’t worth anything. “We are staying here, right here, until I can figure out how to keep that thing out of you. For good. I’m not going through that again.” He shouldn’t have said that, Dean tenses and Sam kicks himself but it’s already too late.
“Yeah, that must have been rough, Sammy” is all he says, and he watches Sam while he says it so he knows that Sam flinches at the name. There’s a look on his face that Sam hasn’t seen before, that’s new since this all started. It’s hard and hopeless, part angry, part sad.
“Dean,” he starts, but Dean shrugs him off, flops down on the bed closest to the door like he always does, always did.
Sam shrugs too (the gesture must be catching) and grabs his bag from where Dean dropped it. He starts sorting his clothes into what needs to be washed and what doesn’t, and then he decides that everything needs to be washed so he stops and throws it all back in the bag.
“I’m gonna go wash this,” he says, and feels amazingly redundant.
“You shouldn’t carry that.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re gonna rip the stitches.”
“I’ll be careful.”
“You really want to leave me here alone?”
Sam turns from the open doorway, and that’s the real question, isn’t it. “Why wouldn’t I?”
Dean doesn’t answer but he does stop his intense study of the ceiling to give Sam a look, and this one’s familiar, mostly are you stupid? with a touch of incredulity and guilt mixed in.
“Dean-” but he knows that look too, one step away from too much and it’s too soon for this, too close.
“Go do your laundry, Sam. I’ll be here.”
“I know,” Sam says, and leaves.
--
He does laundry until just about an hour before dawn and if he glances across the street occasionally, checking the door of their cabin, Dean never needs to know. He walks back across the street lugging the laundry and when he opens the door, Dean’s still awake, staring at the TV and Sam knows an infomercial about food processors can’t be that interesting.
Sam thinks about it, standing there in the dark staring at Dean, and he can’t remember the last time he saw Dean close his eyes for longer than it takes to blink. He drops the bag on the floor near the door and steps between Dean and the TV, nudging his knee against the bed.
“You need to sleep,” he says.
Dean won’t look at him, just rubs at his chest and studies the remote on the end of the bed. “I’ll sleep when I’m dead.”
“That’s not funny.”
“Whatever.” Dean leans forward to grab the remote, a quick, sharp motion and Sam hates himself for flinching away and steps closer immediately afterward. But the look is on Dean’s face again and Sam can’t make it go away.
Sam shucks his jeans and jacket, down to boxers and the designer shirt the demon stole and he lays down on his bed. For a little while it seems like he might fall asleep but something’s not right and even though Dean is right there, right in the room with him he still feels like the phone should ring, like he should be running, getting away so he gets up, shuffles around to the far side of Dean’s bed.
Dean doesn’t say anything, doesn’t even look at him as Sam crawls under the covers. Dean moves over a bit and gives Sam one of the pillows he’d been using to prop himself against the head board. Sam tucks his head against Dean’s side, hooks his hand in the crook of Dean’s arm, resting against his chest and the tight, panicky feeling in his chest goes away and he falls asleep.
--
Heavy arm across his back, holding him down when he wakes up and he feels Dean’s breath against the back of his neck, slow and even in sleep. He doesn’t move for long moments, letting the warmth, the breath, letting Dean sink into him, meld with his bones.
He doesn’t move, but Dean wakes up anyway, his breathing changes, it’s faster when he jerks back in a quick, harsh movement from where he’d been pressed against Sam’s back.
Sam rolls over to pull him back, call him a jerk but Dean’s up already and Sam only catches a glimpse of Dean’s back before he shuts the bathroom door behind him.
--
Dean showers, Sam showers and Sam’s rooting through his bag for clothes when he realizes that Dean’s wearing one of his shirts. One of Sam’s shirts, not one of the brand-name things the demon stole. “Do you want to get rid of these?” he asks, gesturing towards Dean’s bag.
Dean shrugs. “Stole ‘em fair and square.”
“You didn’t.”
“Semantics.”
“No, you’ve got to stop it. You didn’t steal them.”
“My hands, my face on whatever security camera was watching. Might as well have.”
Something about the slightly too large shirt makes Dean look smaller, not just smaller but fragile, like he might break if Sam pushes it much further and he gives it up, again. He can dance around this for as long as Dean can. Longer.
He picks up another of the new shirts, rips the tag off and puts it on.
“I’m going into town. We need food.”
Dean doesn’t look up from the magazine he’s flipping through, a back order of People. “And beer.”
“Okay, we need food and beer. Coming?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Dean looks up at that, another variation of the are you stupid look on his face. “Why should I?”
“Because if you don’t I’ll only get light beer?”
“Then you’d have to drink it.”
“I’m okay with that.”
“College twisted your brain. You go, Sam. You don’t have to watch me every second of the day.”
“I’m not. I just.” Don’t want to leave you alone right now. Ever. But he can’t say those things to Dean and he wonders how different things would be if he could. “Fine, I’ll be back.” He grabs the keys from the table near the door and leaves.
On to part three.
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
Disclaimer: If I owned them, it would be a different kind of show and would have to run on cable.
The phone rings again late in the morning, a chirruping song from the front seat of Bobby’s truck and Sam answers, eyes still on the road. “Yeah?”
“Sam?”
“Dean? That you?” He jerks the wheel to the side, tires skidding as he stops on the shoulder.
“Yeah. This is hard, I can’t do this long. You have to find me. You have to kill me if you can’t get this out of me.”
“It won’t do any good. We pushed Meg out a window and the demon held her together. The only way is to exorcize it.”
“Find a way, Sam. I can’t do this for much longer.”
“Where are you?”
But again, as before, his breathing changes and the squatting evil thing inside him takes over again. “Still not gonna tell you that, Sammy. It’s not time yet.”
“Are you. Are you letting him take over?”
The demon chuckles but it doesn’t answer and it doesn’t matter anyway.
Sam punches the dash, knuckles cracked and already bleeding. “Why? Why are you doing this to Dean and not me?”
“You know what, Sammy? I like you. And I’m really going to answer. You’ve been done. Your brother loves you, he loves you so much it’s disgusting. He loves you so much that you could kill everyone in the world, everyone, Sammy, and he wouldn’t blame you. He’d try to stop you, sure, just like he did before, but blame? He’d only blame himself for not stopping you. For not stopping whoever is possessing you. Funny how the human mind works.”
“So you make him feel guilty.”
“Oh Sammy, it’s so much more than that.” He giggles and Sam’s stomach rolls, lead butterflies and maybe a second visit from breakfast. “He’s not just hurting other people. He’s hurting you. He’s making you worry, making you cry, making you clean up the messes of your friends that he leaves behind. Well, not that last one, the psychic, but still. It’s coming, it isn’t over yet. And Dean will never forgive himself for that. Isn’t this fun?”
“You’re sick.”
“Nope, I’m demonic, boy. And guess what? I’m coming after you now.”
The demon hangs up before Sam can and he sits in Bobby’s truck on the side of the road, sun shining through the windshield onto his bleeding hands. A car passes, the first he’s seen in hours, and it jolts him, knocks him out of wherever he was. He’s outwardly calm and collected as he gets out of the truck and grabs the tire iron from the tool box in the back. He grips it tightly, like a baseball bat, like Dean taught him years ago on a sandlot in some small town and he’s anything but calm, anything but collected as he lets it fly against Bobby’s truck, driving hard dents into the side of the bed. Each time he connects it sends a ripple of pain up his arms into his shoulders and he grits his teeth and keeps hitting, keeps going until he can’t anymore, until the tire iron falls from his fingers and he drops to his knees on the side of the road. He rests his forehead against the truck, his skin catches on a jagged hole and his tears, unchecked, drop from his chin to soak the dust at his knees.
--
It’s hard to run when he doesn’t know what’s behind him. Where it is. And he runs because he still doesn’t know how to save Dean, how to get it out of him, if it’s even possible. And if it all adds up to make him feel like a cowardly piece of shit, he ignores it and drives on.
Small town in the panhandle of Texas, they all look the same after a while. Big enough for a 7-11, too small for a Wal-Mart. He checks into the first motel he sees, lays down the credit card. He walks across the street to the gas station and spends the last of the change he found in Bobby’s truck on a bottle of coke and a pack of gum. The girl behind the counter smiles at him, she’d be interested if he gave her half a glance, but he’s pretty sure any part of him he could give to her is broken now. He nods, gives a half smile, all he’s really capable of, and leaves the store.
He sees her again that night, vision pounding against his eyes and it’s quick, the demon doesn’t bother to taunt her first, play it out. Doesn’t even call Sam when it kills her, like it doesn’t care who she is, she’s just another number to add to the total. Like all life isn’t precious.
Dean is there when he opens his eyes and it’s so familiar for a minute that he falls into Dean’s hands, it’s such a huge fucking relief to see him and he wants to tell Dean about the horrible dream he can’t seem to wake up from, but the hands tighten around his arm, then around his neck, and the headlights of a passing car cross his face and it isn’t Dean’s face. Or it is, but not his expression at all.
The demon’s on top of him, pressing him into the bed and cutting off his air and he grabs at its wrists but it’s stronger than he is. He bucks up, trying to throw it off but it moves with him and laughs a little, a lot, before it bends over him, hands tight around his neck, knees tight against his hips.
“You saw her, huh?” it says, face down next to Sam’s, harsh breath, a rhythm that isn’t Deans, against his neck. “Her pretty face. You could have bagged her, Sammy, I’m disappointed in you.” It sits up a little, hands still locked around his throat but it’s face is above his, mouth brushing against Sam’s face when it asks, “More notice than usual, isn’t it?” like it expects him to answer.
Shit, it hasn’t killed her yet. He pulls at the hands on his neck but it’s getting harder. His chest is tight, stars in his eyes and he wonders if this is it, the end, if its going to kill him now and leave Dean alone. He struggles harder at that thought, but it’s too late.
“Good night, Sammy,” it says, as his vision goes black.
--
Pounding on the door wakes him up the next day, a grouchy voice telling him to leave or pay for another day. He leaves.
He catches a glimpse of the bruises around his neck in the rearview as he climbs into the truck, a memento of his first face-to-face with the thing that’s been occupying his brother’s body for weeks. (Months? He wishes he could remember.)
He drives up into Colorado, no plan, no destination. He wants to get away from the girl, from the demon, from the pain and the guilt and not knowing what to do. He’s still running.
He stops for gas once, waits in line for the men’s and lets a guy with two antsy kids go ahead of him. The guy smiles in thanks and Sam just nods.
Another small town and he only stops for the night when he can’t drive anymore for his eyes shutting. He’s afraid he’ll nod off completely and end up in a ditch. Another crappy motel with cheap carpets and hard pillows. He doesn’t remember going to bed.
He sees the guy (but not the two kids) in a vision that night, it’s all becoming sickly and sadly familiar.
He’s up and out the door before the vision really fades and he thinks that’s why he doesn’t see the demon at first, Dean’s body lounging casually against the wall outside his door.
He’s up against the wall, the casual gone and taut lines replace it, pressed against him, all along his length. Dean’s arm is against his neck, elbow pressing into the bruises from last night. “Going somewhere?” it asks.
Sam looks up, away, anywhere but at this thing twisting Dean’s face.
“Thirty-one down. That’s a lot, right?”
The light’s beginning to waver and it might be the lack of oxygen, but Sam’s pretty sure it’s tears.
“Is that enough to make Dean a mass murderer? What’s the cut off for that?”
Sam looks down at that. No, he mouths around gritted teeth.
“What was that?” It grins, delighted to be acknowledged and Sam looks away again, up over its head and he’s never been happier to be taller than Dean, to be able to look away without effort, because it’s getting harder and harder to move.
“He used to be angry in here, Sammy. He was so angry at first. I loved that, it felt good. He’s not angry anymore, but it’s okay. I like this better.”
His vision blacks again but before it goes completely he sees the demon twisting Dean’s face into a grin, a horrid, fake, unreal grin. It’s the last thing he sees.
--
Tapping on his foot wakes him up. A policeman is crouched at his feet. “Were you mugged, son?”
He sits up quickly, he doesn’t want to talk to this guy, to talk to anyone, to even look at someone. They might be next.
“No.”
“What happened at your neck there?”
“Fell down the stairs.”
The cop sighs, stands up and looks down at him in that disapproving way every law man seems to have. “All right, you want to press charges against the stairs, you let me know. You smell clean, just stay out of trouble.”
Sam wants to laugh, but he doesn’t.
--
On the road again, down into Arizona. He likes the western states for their big long stretches of open road, nothing around for miles and no one to see. He checks the rearview compulsively and he keeps expecting to see the Impala, keeps expecting the demon to show up, to run him off the road, to finish it somehow. Maybe it’ll be up to him. He doesn’t want to think about that.
He stops way past nightfall in a tiny town, so small they only have one motel and Sam almost drives on when he catches a glimpse of the tiny grandmotherly type behind the counter. He tries not to look at her, he tries not to talk to her, but it’s hard to check into a motel without doing either.
Maybe it’s the bruises he didn’t bother to hide. Maybe it’s the circles under his eyes, broken skin on his knuckles, the way he sways against the counter with the effort to remain upright. She notices something and presses her hand to his cheek. He looks at her, right into her eyes, and she smiles. “This too shall pass,” she says, thumb stroking along his cheekbone.
Sam pulls away, leaves the key on the counter and stumbles out of the office. No, he thinks. NONONONONONO. He knows who’s next.
He sits in the truck all night, a little away from the office. Close enough that he can stop the demon when it shows up, far enough away that she won’t see him out there. He tries, he tries so hard to stay awake, to not doze off in the long hours as he watches her move around the office, pick up the romance novel she’d been thumbing through when he came in.
The door he’s leaning against is wrenched open and he’d fall out but the demon catches him, shoves him back inside and holds him down while it ties his hands to the wheel of the truck. Just holds him, one-handed, and Sam can’t tell if he’s really that close to the end of his rope, or if the demon really is that strong.
“Try getting out of that one, kiddo,” it says, beaming at him, face inches away. “She’ll be thirty-two. Just one more.” It leans forward a bit, kisses him on the cheek before it pulls back and shuts the door.
He pulls, yanks against the ropes holding his wrists down but they’re too tight. He gets his teeth around one of them, tries to pull it out of its knot and it might come that way, but not soon enough. He’s still pulling on it, working on it when he hears the rumble of the Impala as it drives away and he looks up, through the office window. The pool of blood spills out the door.
He’s too tired to cry anymore, though he would, even though he didn’t know her. He rests his forehead against the steering wheel for a few long moments and doesn’t think about anything, about the demon or Dean or the last person it’s going to kill. His mind is empty and blank and free and he tugs at the last knot on the rope, gets his hands free. He starts the truck and drives away.
--
He’s on the side of the road before the next one hits. Another face he might recognize if he bothered to look anyone in the face today, another person sacrificed to the demon’s need. She’s blond this time, pretty and Sam says Jessica, and he knows he didn’t see her.
He’s holding his phone, waiting for it to ring, still sitting on the shoulder of the road. It rings.
“Thirty-three, baby brother. I’m so done.”
“Done?”
“Yeah. Done. That’s a good number, right? Look it up, Sammy. It’s got all kinds of symbolism, since I know that’s your thing.”
“I know.”
“You’ve been running from me. Don’t you want to play? I’m coming for you now, Sammy. Not just for fun this time. It’s time we finished this. I know where you are. You know I do.”
And he does know, of course it can. He still has the bruises to prove it. He braces himself. He’ll never be ready.
--
It catches him again in New Mexico, some tiny little town off the map that Sam can’t remember the name of. Doesn’t knock this time, just unlocks the door and it must have charmed the clerk into giving it the spare key.
“I’m home, sweetheart,” it says.
Sam tries to make a break for it but the demon has Dean’s gun so Sam doesn’t fight (too much). The fewer memories Dean has later of forcing Sam to do anything the better, and the demon seems disappointed but Sam isn’t about to give it the pleasure.
It gets him in the Impala and it’s weird and wrong that something else is driving, that something else is in their car. It looks over at him, at the disgust and anger on his face and it laughs a little before it punches him once, twice, knocking his head against the window and Sam blacks out.
--
Awake again, he’s strung up against a wall, hands above his head and his feet tied down. The demon is in front of him, on its knees and cutting his pants off and Sam hopes this is something Dean won’t remember later.
It doesn’t cut him deep at first, just little nicks on his arms and legs and one longer one across his belly. Enough that it stings and burns and blood drips into little pools, but nothing that won’t heal on its own and Sam wonders what’s next, disgust and fear and worry a cold knot in his belly.
“How well do you know Dean?” it says, smirk on Dean’s face that isn’t his.
“I know everything.”
“Oh?” it says, delighted with the answer. “Everything?”
“Everything that matters.”
It gets up in his face then, presses tight against him and its breath (Dean’s breath) gusts over his cheek when it speaks. “You know everything, huh? Everything that ‘matters’?” Hands on his chest, Dean’s blunt fingertips digging into his ribs. The knife cuts into his side, the cut is deeper than the ones before. “Do you know that Dean wants you? Does that matter? I don’t mean he just wants you around now, Sammy, I mean he wants you in the Biblical sense. Beast with two backs and all that.” He presses forward, lips grazing Sam’s ear as it whispers “your brother wants to fuck you, Sammy.”
Sam jerks against the ropes, turns his head but there’s no getting away, no shutting him up. “He doesn’t.”
“Oh, he does. I do. I wake up in the middle of the night, Sammy, and you’re right there, in the next bed, warm and soft and sleeping and I get hard, thinking about you, about your tight ass and those miles and miles of skin.”
It’s got the knife against his throat, making cuts, one after another into the skin and it leans forward to lick at the blood that spills down his chest. “Nothing to say, Sammy? No innocent protestations?” It leans back and bats its eyes, voice high and mocking. “He does not! How could you ever say such a thing!” Slick grin and its eyes narrow, Dean’s green gaze focused on Sam’s again. “That’s it, Sammy. The last thing Dean’s been hiding from you. Can you believe it?” It pushes back from the wall, spreads its arms out wide. “I mean, can you fucking believe it all?”
“Is that what this was about? The whole time? You spilling Dean’s guts to me?” Sam thinks of smoke, digging graves and the weight of his friends on his shoulders. “Why kill all those people if you just wanted to fuck with our heads?”
“Answered your own question, didn’t you? I did it because I could, Sammy. You’ve got no friends to run to now, no one to help you. No one to stand with you when the end comes. No one but each other, and I think I broke this one. And I already told you, killing people is fun.” He leans forward again, breath hot and sweaty against Sam’s neck and it whispers, “Dean thought so too,” before leaning back again, giggling.
Head down, he stares at the floor. He can’t watch it now, watch it move Dean’s body.
Quick movements, and it’s there again, pressed up against him and Sam brings his head up and away. “Back to more important matters,” it whispers, lips pressed against his neck. “I bet you’d look good, pressed against sweaty sheets. Your mouth on my cock.” It shudders against him, Dean’s dick is hard against his belly and Sam tries to pull away but there’s a wall behind him, nowhere to go. “You have to have thought of it, Sammy,” it says, backing away again. “I am one good looking guy.”
“Stop talking like you’re him,” he grits out. “You’re not him.”
The demon slides forward, dragging Dean’s feet through Sam’s blood. “I am him,” it says, “in every way that matters. I know Dean. I’ve watched Dean. I’m IN Dean, kiddo.”
Sam leans his head back, eyes closed so he doesn’t have to watch it. His head is pounding, sudden and ferocious and he blinks, trying to focus. “You’re not, you’re not him. You’ll never be him, no matter what you do.”
Something flares in its eyes that Sam can’t decipher and it growls, teeth bared and reaches forward with the knife, cutting into Sam’s chest, under his ribs, deep and hard and Sam grits his teeth, bites back on a shout and everything in him wants to cry but it’s Dean and he can’t. The drops of blood are bigger, the pool is bigger, and Sam wonders how much he can lose and still survive this.
Its hands on him again, rough strokes over the shallow cuts on his chest and stomach and its fingers clench around his hips, dragging his lower body forward until he’s pressed against Dean’s body.
“You just don’t get it, junior,” it says, slow rotation of its hips and Sam clenches his teeth. The demon is talking, a low rumble of noise in his ear, all the dirty, filthy things it says Dean wants to do but Sam can’t concentrate and all he hears is buzzing, like bees trapped inside his brain. He almost doesn’t notice when the demon’s voice stops, when it shoves away from him in a hasty, clumsy maneuver and Sam opens his eyes and Dean’s face is panicked, just ridiculously scared and then, then it’s Dean. Dean looks at him from his own face and says “it’s scared, Sam. Is it, God, did I do that to you?” Dean reaches his hands out, fingers skirting the cuts on Sam’s torso. He snatches his hands away and backs up, arms wrapped around his middle, hunched over like it pains him too. “He’s angry,” he says, teeth clenched and he falls to his knees, still hunched over his stomach and Sam is watching, slack-jawed, eyes blinking against the gray when Dean’s head tips back and the demon leaves in a rush of black smoke.
Dean slumps forward again, when the stream ends and the demon is gone. He shakes, Sam can see it from across the room, hunched forward and shaking and he vomits until there’s nothing more, only dry heaves he can’t control.
Sam pulls at the ropes holding him, struggling against them for the first time but they’re tight, they’re really tight and that’s one thing Dean Winchester has always been amazing at, tying people up.
“Dean,” he tries, voice broken and husky but it’s enough, Dean’s head snaps up and Sam can see his eyes from across the room, clear and bright and its like Sam is the only thing he can see, the only thing that matters now. The only thing that ever mattered.
“God, Sammy,” he says and Sam flinches at the name (it isn’t Dean’s name for him anymore, it’s the demon’s), at Dean’s face and Dean’s voice and he can barely hold his head up and Dean’s there, warm hands on his cold ones, cutting the ropes away. Sam slumps to the floor. He opens his eyes later, seconds or minutes and Dean’s hunched over him, shirt off and pressed against his chest.
His eyes are on the shirt, on Sam’s chest and the blood and Sam reaches up, touches his arm. “Dean,” he says, but his tongue is dry and it might not sound like that at all.
Dean looks at him, grabs Sam’s hand and presses it against the shirt, held tight against the wound. “Can you hold that there?” he asks. “I can get some stuff from the car.”
Sam nods. “Water too.”
“Yeah.” He watches Dean walk out of the room and he almost calls out, almost asks Dean to take him too and he watches the door till Dean comes back, bags in one hand and a water bottle in the other. It’s obvious Sam was watching for him and he can’t read the look on Dean’s face but it makes him sad, makes him hurt worse than the cuts. Dean uncaps the water bottle and hands it to him, puts his hands back on the t-shirt.
“Drink, we’ll fix this in a minute.”
Sam downs half the bottle and gives it back. Dean takes a few sips, rinses his mouth and recaps it, sets it aside. He lifts the shirt up a bit and curses. “Needs stitches. What did I do to you?”
Sam shakes his head, hand on Dean’s again and he says “not you” but Dean’s closed down again, face cold and hard and a little too like the demon’s. Sam looks away but the pool of blood, his blood is next to him. He looks back at Dean, it’s easier. “Let’s get out of here,” he says and Dean’s face changes, softer and sadder and he looks at Sam like he’s nuts.
“I don’t want to stay here,” Sam says. “I’m fine, we can go.”
“You’re not fine.”
“I’ve had worse.”
“Sam-”
It’s tangible, the weight on his shoulders, on Dean’s shoulders, the air between them heavy with everything that’s happened. Sam has been hurt worse, but Dean’s never hurt him like this before.
“Please.”
Dean pulls himself together, pulls Sam together, gets him clothes and helps him stand, hand still pressed tightly against Sam’s chest and it’s like any other fight, any other time one of them got hurt but it’s not like any other time at all.
“You should lay down,” Dean says when Sam tries to get in the front seat. He shrugs, lets himself be led to the back, sprawls across the seat and tucks his legs against the door, his head propped against his bag.
Dean grabs something from the trunk and goes back inside the building for a few long moments and Sam has his eye on the door until Dean comes back out, squirting lighter fluid behind him. He lights a match and flicks it at the open door, stands for a few moments and watches the fire catch, spread quickly along the floor and up the walls. Sam watches Dean.
He watches when Dean turns back to the car, flicks his eyes to the back where Sam is and then down, eyes on the ground as he walks back, drops into the front seat. The rumble of the engine is familiar and this is right, him and Dean in the car together, and even if they don’t know where they’re going, where they’ve been, or what the hell they’ll do, Sam can’t help feeling like nothing can hurt him now and he falls asleep watching the back of Dean’s head.
--
Sam opens his eyes again when the car stops. Dean catches his eye in the rearview. “It’s the first place I saw, we need to get you fixed up. I’ll go get a room.”
Sam nods because there aren’t a lot of other options. He wants to be far, far away but he also wants to let Dean fix him, stitch him up and put a bandage on. Maybe Dean needs to.
Dean comes back, keys in hand and he helps Sam out of the back, grabs the bags and leads him to their room. He still has the flask they always keep for this purpose and he pours whiskey down Sam’s throat, enough that he only flinches a little when Dean starts to sew him up, enough that he has to bite his tongue, really bite it until it bleeds to keep himself from rambling, from spilling everything he hated about the time that Dean was gone.
Dean’s stitches have never been the neatest, too impatient but that’s the best because it’s quick and clean. He tapes gauze down over the stitches, over the shallower cuts on Sam’s neck and stomach, arms and legs. He uses the rough white hotel towels to clean Sam up the best he can, scrubbing at the streaks of blood, rubbing over the stitches like he can erase them, the reasons for them and it hurts, it hurts more than the stitches, more than the cuts did when the demon gave them to him, and Sam has to stop him, pull the towel away when he’s clean, when it’s done.
“Sorry,” Dean says, and won’t meet his eyes. He starts to get up but Sam catches his hand, his arm and won’t let him up. “Sam, what?”
“Don’t go,” he says.
“I’m not.”
“Don’t go.”
Dean’s face isn’t closed anymore, not cold, it’s close to broken and he works at something in his mouth, like he can’t say it but it needs to be said. He touches just the tips of his fingers to the bruises ringing Sam’s neck, to the tape and the gauze and to bare skin, parts the demon hadn’t gotten to yet. He can’t look at Sam when he says, “How can you. How can you even look at me? Let me touch you?”
Sam tightens his grip, fingers digging into Dean’s skin. “Stupid.”
Dean laughs a little, but it isn’t a real laugh.
“You’re my brother,” Sam says, tugging on Dean’s arm some more. Dean gives up but it was never a real fight and he lays next to Sam and Sam still won’t let go of his arm. He watches Dean watch him until he can’t keep his eyes open anymore, but he never lets go. He listens to Dean breathing, to the soft susurrations in and out, in and out, the rhythm of his life. It’s the last thing he hears before he falls asleep.
-
He opens his eyes and it’s still dark, or dark again. His hand is still clenched around Dean’s arm and Dean’s eyes are open but they’re not looking at him. He loosens his grip a bit but doesn’t let go. Dean shifts his gaze, acknowledges Sam’s awake, but won’t look at him.
His chest hurts but he doesn’t want to say anything about that. His head feels weird too, empty somehow and it takes him a really long time to realize it feels weird because it doesn’t hurt, no pain, no migraines, no visions for hours, maybe days. He brings his free hand up, taps against his head experimentally. Nothing.
“Brain still there?”
He doesn’t laugh, but he doesn’t think Dean expected him to. “Dean?” he whispers.
“What?”
Sam tries to shift around to his side, but moving his torso pulls at his stitches and that hurts so he stops. He settles for turning his head, owl-like, and watching Dean as he asks, “What did you mean, back there, when you said it was scared? Or angry?” And because he’s watching he sees Dean flinch a little, his jaw clenches, teeth grinding and he’d pull away probably but Sam won’t let go of him.
A few moments and just like that, the fight goes out of him and Sam’s never seen his brother look defeated before. He hates it. “The yellow eyed bastard was angry, screaming at the one in my head, that one was scared. Angry because I was hurting you, maybe killing you, and it has other plans.”
Red flags in Sam’s head and it’s starting to get a little fuzzy around the edges, sleep dragging at him again but he knows enough still to say, “Hey, improper use of pronoun there. Not you. The demon, not you.”
Dean inhales, exhales slowly and Sam listens to it, the familiar rhythm of Dean. “Yeah, sure,” he says.
Sam knows Dean doesn’t believe him yet but he’s too tired to argue. Sleep drags at him again and his fingers tighten again on Dean’s arm and he gives in.
-
He opens his eyes again. Daylight, but the curtains are drawn so it’s muted. His chest still hurts.
He turns his head, looks for Dean, and realizes his hand is clenched in sheets, not skin. He panics, hand scrambling in the sheet as if Dean is hiding somehow.
“Relax, Sammy. I just had to pee.” The voice is behind him but he doesn’t turn over to look.
Sick combination: the name, the sarcasm, the tight, panicked knot in his chest. He shudders and his gut clenches and he tries to tell himself to stop, that it’s Dean and not something else.
He sits up slowly, hand on his chest and Dean walks a wide circle around him, sits on the unused bed, close enough that Sam scoots forward a little and their knees bump in the empty space between them. He has a ringed bruise on his arm where Sam held him all night.
“You’re scared of me.”
And he is, a little. Not of Dean, exactly, but of what Dean might become again, of what he was. “I’m not,” he says, and maybe he’s trying to convince himself as well.
Dean’s face is still skeptical, pain and anger and guilt etched in the sharp angles.
Sam brings his hand up and in a gesture that neither one of them would have accepted before, he smooths his hand over Dean’s cheek, fingers curling around the nape of his neck.
“I’ll show you I’m not,” he says.
Dean meets his eyes and they’re the clear green he remembers, though he’s never seen this expression before. There’s guilt there, disbelief, doubt, unhappiness, a whole mess of negativity that Sam wants, needs, to erase. New things, strange things and it’s a little like having to rewrite their language, the unspoken meaning between them because it’s all become different somehow.
Dean is absolutely still for a few minutes and it reminds Sam of a deer caught in bright lights, a rabbit that scents a hunter, something vulnerable and wild. Sam doesn’t move either, hand still on Dean’s face, gaze still locked, and Sam’s heart is pounding but it isn’t fear this time. It’s something else.
Dean moves first, jerks his head away from Sam’s grasp and holds out his hand. “I also grabbed these.” He drops two pills in Sam’s hand, antibiotics from the small arsenal of prescription drugs they keep on hand, just in case. “For the knife wound,” he says.
Sam shakes them around a minute, like dice he’s about to throw. He looks at Dean still, considering, until Dean stands and starts rummaging through their bags, sorting through clothes and weapons. “You going to take them?” he asks.
Sam shrugs, pops the pills in his mouth and dry swallows them, gagging a little at the sharp feeling as they scrape along their way to his stomach. He grabs the water bottle on the night stand as an afterthought and washes them down the rest of the way.
“We should move on,” he says, recapping the bottle.
Dean shrugs, still rummaging through the bags and Sam wonders exactly how much there is in there to organize. “Whatever you want.”
“I want more distance between us and that room.”
Dean stops for a minute, eyes on his hands and Sam doesn’t need to specify what room. Dean knows. “Me too,” he says.
Sam showers carefully (with the door open, so he can hear Dean in the main room), not getting the stitches any wetter than he has to but it’s all kinds of difficult, since they’re in the middle of his damn chest. He’s light headed by the time he’s done, movements slow and jerky and maybe standing this long was a bad idea. He can’t remember the last time he was hurt bad enough that he couldn’t shower.
He takes some painkillers in the bathroom where Dean can’t see him and pulls on his jeans. He really needs to do some laundry, everything from the bag in the Impala smells like dirty socks. He digs through Dean’s bag, comes up with a bunch of clothing he doesn’t recognize from the many, many times he’s done the wash.
He’s holding up a couple of shirts (and, honestly, name brand? Dean?) when Dean says “I stole those.”
Sam looks up, Dean’s eyes are glued to the TV screen. “You mean, it did.”
“Whatever, Sam, they’re unpaid- for merchandise.”
“What happened to your other stuff?”
“Threw it away.”
And yeah, Sam can’t really see the demon hanging out in a laundromat either. He picks one of the new shirts and rips the tag off, slips it over his head. “You ready?”
Dean clicks the TV off. “Yeah,” he says. Sam grabs the keys from the dresser and Dean doesn’t protest for once. He grabs their bags and follows Sam out the door, into the sunshine.
--
Sam drives until it’s dark and then way past it. He was with the demon the first time he rode in the car since everything happened, and asleep the second time and it should feel stranger to him that he missed the car but it doesn’t; he grew up in here and it’s home as much as Dean is. He pats the steering wheel and feels like he understands Dean a little bit more.
“Dude, were you just, petting the car?”
“No. Maybe. I missed it.”
Dean was laughing a minute ago, but that shuts him up faster than anything and Sam watches out of the corner of his eye as he stills, turns back to the road in front of him. “Yeah,” he says.
“Dean, I didn’t mean-”
“It’s fine.”
“It’s not fine. It isn’t your fault.”
“Yeah,” Dean says again.
--
Sam drives up into the mountains, small, winding back roads through tall trees and long stretches of empty dark. He stops finally at a small, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it town boasting a hotel and, further down the main strip, a small collection of cabins for rent. Sam pulls up in front of the double wide that serves the cabins as an office.
He turns the car off, tosses the keys to Dean. “I’ll be right back,” he says.
And he leaves Dean alone with the keys and the Impala. He hopes Dean gets the message.
He comes back with a small key dangling from a whittled grizzly bear and Dean’s leaning against the hood of the car, waiting.
“Number two,” Sam says, shaking the key. “Laundromat across the street.”
Sam tries to grab his bag but Dean takes it from him, carefully avoids touching Sam’s hand. “Don’t rip the stitches.” He follows Sam to the cabin and Sam unlocks the door and steps back because Dean always walks in first. Old habits die hard.
Dean pushes the door to their one-room cabin open and Sam peers over his shoulder. They’ve stayed in nicer places, sure, and the dead animals peering at them from every available inch of wall space might be a little creepy, but it was cheap and it was their’s for as long as they needed it.
“Home sweet home,” Dean says as he steps across the threshold and drops the bags on the floor.
Sam shrugs. “They rent by the month.”
Surprise and a little bit of worry in Dean’s voice. “We’re not staying here that long.”
And Sam stops, staring straight at Dean because if Dean doesn’t understand this, it isn’t worth anything. “We are staying here, right here, until I can figure out how to keep that thing out of you. For good. I’m not going through that again.” He shouldn’t have said that, Dean tenses and Sam kicks himself but it’s already too late.
“Yeah, that must have been rough, Sammy” is all he says, and he watches Sam while he says it so he knows that Sam flinches at the name. There’s a look on his face that Sam hasn’t seen before, that’s new since this all started. It’s hard and hopeless, part angry, part sad.
“Dean,” he starts, but Dean shrugs him off, flops down on the bed closest to the door like he always does, always did.
Sam shrugs too (the gesture must be catching) and grabs his bag from where Dean dropped it. He starts sorting his clothes into what needs to be washed and what doesn’t, and then he decides that everything needs to be washed so he stops and throws it all back in the bag.
“I’m gonna go wash this,” he says, and feels amazingly redundant.
“You shouldn’t carry that.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re gonna rip the stitches.”
“I’ll be careful.”
“You really want to leave me here alone?”
Sam turns from the open doorway, and that’s the real question, isn’t it. “Why wouldn’t I?”
Dean doesn’t answer but he does stop his intense study of the ceiling to give Sam a look, and this one’s familiar, mostly are you stupid? with a touch of incredulity and guilt mixed in.
“Dean-” but he knows that look too, one step away from too much and it’s too soon for this, too close.
“Go do your laundry, Sam. I’ll be here.”
“I know,” Sam says, and leaves.
--
He does laundry until just about an hour before dawn and if he glances across the street occasionally, checking the door of their cabin, Dean never needs to know. He walks back across the street lugging the laundry and when he opens the door, Dean’s still awake, staring at the TV and Sam knows an infomercial about food processors can’t be that interesting.
Sam thinks about it, standing there in the dark staring at Dean, and he can’t remember the last time he saw Dean close his eyes for longer than it takes to blink. He drops the bag on the floor near the door and steps between Dean and the TV, nudging his knee against the bed.
“You need to sleep,” he says.
Dean won’t look at him, just rubs at his chest and studies the remote on the end of the bed. “I’ll sleep when I’m dead.”
“That’s not funny.”
“Whatever.” Dean leans forward to grab the remote, a quick, sharp motion and Sam hates himself for flinching away and steps closer immediately afterward. But the look is on Dean’s face again and Sam can’t make it go away.
Sam shucks his jeans and jacket, down to boxers and the designer shirt the demon stole and he lays down on his bed. For a little while it seems like he might fall asleep but something’s not right and even though Dean is right there, right in the room with him he still feels like the phone should ring, like he should be running, getting away so he gets up, shuffles around to the far side of Dean’s bed.
Dean doesn’t say anything, doesn’t even look at him as Sam crawls under the covers. Dean moves over a bit and gives Sam one of the pillows he’d been using to prop himself against the head board. Sam tucks his head against Dean’s side, hooks his hand in the crook of Dean’s arm, resting against his chest and the tight, panicky feeling in his chest goes away and he falls asleep.
--
Heavy arm across his back, holding him down when he wakes up and he feels Dean’s breath against the back of his neck, slow and even in sleep. He doesn’t move for long moments, letting the warmth, the breath, letting Dean sink into him, meld with his bones.
He doesn’t move, but Dean wakes up anyway, his breathing changes, it’s faster when he jerks back in a quick, harsh movement from where he’d been pressed against Sam’s back.
Sam rolls over to pull him back, call him a jerk but Dean’s up already and Sam only catches a glimpse of Dean’s back before he shuts the bathroom door behind him.
--
Dean showers, Sam showers and Sam’s rooting through his bag for clothes when he realizes that Dean’s wearing one of his shirts. One of Sam’s shirts, not one of the brand-name things the demon stole. “Do you want to get rid of these?” he asks, gesturing towards Dean’s bag.
Dean shrugs. “Stole ‘em fair and square.”
“You didn’t.”
“Semantics.”
“No, you’ve got to stop it. You didn’t steal them.”
“My hands, my face on whatever security camera was watching. Might as well have.”
Something about the slightly too large shirt makes Dean look smaller, not just smaller but fragile, like he might break if Sam pushes it much further and he gives it up, again. He can dance around this for as long as Dean can. Longer.
He picks up another of the new shirts, rips the tag off and puts it on.
“I’m going into town. We need food.”
Dean doesn’t look up from the magazine he’s flipping through, a back order of People. “And beer.”
“Okay, we need food and beer. Coming?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Dean looks up at that, another variation of the are you stupid look on his face. “Why should I?”
“Because if you don’t I’ll only get light beer?”
“Then you’d have to drink it.”
“I’m okay with that.”
“College twisted your brain. You go, Sam. You don’t have to watch me every second of the day.”
“I’m not. I just.” Don’t want to leave you alone right now. Ever. But he can’t say those things to Dean and he wonders how different things would be if he could. “Fine, I’ll be back.” He grabs the keys from the table near the door and leaves.
On to part three.