Fanfic - SPN: Evil He Refused to See (PG-13, Slash: Sam/Dean)
Title: Evil He Refused to See [Evil!Sammy Universe]
Author: eboniorchid
Fandom: Supernatural
Characters: Sam Winchester/Dean Winchester
Prompt: "081-Relieved " for 100moods, challenge table here.
Word Count: ~4,000 words.
Rating: PG-13 for mentions of violence and sexuality.
Warnings/Spoilers: Angst. Future. Manipulation. Established relationship. Slash. Mentions of m/m sex and violence. Character study. Plot. AU after "Simon Said". Potential spoilers through "Simon Said".
Disclaimer: I own nothing. Really. Nothing.
Summary: Dean knows that they're in trouble when he's the one deciding that they need to have a talk.
Betas: Thanks be to L <3, brynwulf, and dragojustine, who kicked my ass around town to get this all tightened up nicely.
Author's Notes: I'd say "wow, that was fast (for me)!" but this was supershort and mostly done ages ago, so I shant kid myself. It's a really important piece, though, so don't skip it if you don't have to. Follows not long after "Plain Gold Band" (NC-17, Slash/Het: Sam/Dean, Dean/OFC, Dean/OMC) // For more info about my Evil!Sammy Universe, including links to all installments, please go here.
Color Contacts
No. … No. … No! … Dean! "… NO!"
Bleary-eyed but determined, Dean was rolling out of his bed and crouching beside his brother's before he'd even fully woken up. He wiped his mouth as he blinked down at Sam, who was tangled tightly in the sheets and curled up as if the amount of clear bed space was directly related to the size of his nightmare.
"Sam?" He put his hand on his brother's tense shoulder, making his presence felt before shaking it a little. "Sam, wake up!"
If anything, Sam's eyes only screwed down tighter, but his voice returned to something quiet, almost forlorn. "No. … No. … Please- …" He stopped himself, shaking his head in jerks as the lines of his face became wrinkled with strain. "Can't- … No. … Not strong enough. I- … No."
The 'not strong enough' knocked Dean's thoughts in another direction, his brain bringing up memories of Sam on the floor in some town in California, damn near losing his mind. He'd been awake then, but this terror sounded almost exactly the same. "Sam! It's just a vision. I'm right here."
Sam shook his head slowly, as if disbelieving Dean's words, and continued to mumble 'no' and 'can't' and 'not strong enough'.
"Sam, come on. You can hear me. You know I'm right here. You can do this."
"No- … … … Why?" Sam croaked the word as if it took all his energy to pull himself out of the endless loop even just for a moment.
"Because I want you here, need you here."
"Lie- …" It was a plaintive word.
"No, Sam, I swear- …"
"Lie. … Don't want. … No good." Sam's whispers and tears made Dean's throat ache and he couldn't interrupt again as some part of his brother fought to communicate. "Left. … Away. … Fight. … Alone. … Not strong enough. … Can't- … Please- … No. … No! … No! … NO!"
Sam shot up to sitting as he shouted, awake and shaking with anger despite the tears that were still streaming down his face. "Get away from me!" He threw off the covers and his brother's hands, heat radiating from him in a way that Dean couldn't deny as he paced to the far end of the room, breathing hard before snapping back around to go through his bag and begin donning clothes.
"Sam." Dean was cautious and working to be patient, but the importance of the information, the urgency that he could feel, made the question imperative. "What did you see?"
"Nothing. A bad dream. Doesn't matter." He sniffed and wiped his face, always looking away as he continued yanking on his clothes.
"No, it wasn't. You were talking in your sleep, like when you had that vision back in California." Dean took a step towards his brother, the floor creaking underfoot, making Sam flinch. "What did you see?"
Sam shoved his feet into socks, then into shoes, tying them violently, as if ripping them would be just as useful as making them into bows and knots. "None of your business."
"Yeah, it is. My name was in there."
"Lucky you, but it still doesn't make it your business." Sam never looked at him as he headed for the door and opened it to the dark night, slamming it shut on his words. "Not everything is about you, Dean."
Dean huffed out something sigh-like, his head dropping back on his shoulders as he quickly ran over his options, finally deciding not to follow Sam. He was jittery, but the bulk of the tension had walked out with his brother, which probably meant time spent apart would be better than forced time together. The rule he'd set for himself since December was not to wait up, though. Sam wandered at night far more than healthy, but Dean did most of the driving, so Sam had the luxury of sleeping on the road more. They just couldn't afford for both of them to be half asleep all the time. Still, this night felt different. It had his blood zipping through his system, so he sat up - not waiting, of course, but awake - and flicked through too many minutes of bad late-night TV.
Three hours later, Sam came back through the door, just as Dean's eyelids were beginning to droop, and the smell of smoke lingered in his wake, faintly covering another scent that Dean couldn't - or maybe didn't want to - place. "You taking up cigarettes, Sam?"
Sam let his lips tilt into something that could have been an angry smile as he walked further into the room and kicked off his shoes. "I don't smoke. Not that it's any of your business."
"Hey." Dean's eyebrows tipped downwards before rising with the attempted lightness of his tone. "Maybe I just want to bum a smoke."
"You aren't drunk enough."
Dean just shrugged and let things quiet again, the television mixing its chatter and laugh tracks with the rest of the white noise in the room. As Sam stripped down to his boxers, though, Dean opened his mouth to start the conversation again.
Sam immediately squashed his intentions. "Don't. I don't want to be lectured and I don't want to be interrogated, so if you want a fist in the face, then please … keep talking."
Dean huffed, shaking his head as he thought, bemused, about taking a crack across the jaw from Sam. He shivered, though, when the heat in the room spiked and he realized that Sam was right there beside his bed.
"Did you not understand me the first time? I'm really not in the mood for this tonight."
"You're being ridiculous, Sam." Dean looked up from the dark spot he'd been eyeing on the ancient TV box. "I'm not even … doing anything." His last two words were slower as he took in the intensity that his brother was pressing into the air around them.
"Can you only shut up when someone stuffs something in your mouth?" Sam's teeth clenched in the façade of a smile. "'Cause I'm not really in the mood for that either."
Dean shook his head and looked away, running his fingers through his hair restlessly. "Whatever."
"Go to bed." Sam reached past him to turn out the light, then climbed into his own bed, facing away from him. After a long moment of watching his brother, Dean did the same, stretching out and breathing in the stale scent of sheets as if to make his nose forget and let his churning mind sleep.
It was two months before he smelled it again and again it came with the vision. Then one month passed before Sam came in with the same smell, but without the warning nightmare. Then it was only two weeks, then one, and when it started to become a constant, like the smell of leather, gun oil, and beer, Dean couldn't shut his brain down anymore. He'd already gone through Sam's bag four times over the past month and never once found a pack of smokes.
Sometimes he wished he was an idiot. It seemed like it would be easier.
Watching Sam sleep, Dean could feel his shoulders falling, collapsing in on himself as he tried not to think about why Sam being here after all this time somehow hurt more, almost, than when he'd been away. It was like there were pieces missing or broken, like Sam was wounded in places Dean couldn't see and Sam wouldn't show him. He'd tried to believe that Sam had really spent all those months just looking for answers, doing construction and odd jobs here and there, avoiding him - and maybe he had - but there was so much more to the story than the bits that Dean had heard so far.
Sam had said that his search for answers had turned up something, more than they'd known before, and he'd share it when he was ready, but if this attitude, this distance, this aching, was what came of those answers, then Dean almost wished that his brother had never found out. He was trying to hurtle his own fear and be strong, knowing that his own insecurities were continuing to push Sam away, making him think that he had to walk the road alone. Yet it was hard to do more than refuse to look, just like he had before Sam ran away, because the truth could be ugly enough to destroy them both.
What else did they have now, though? His plan to the kill the Demon - Azazel, Sam had called him - was on the rocks, no leads in sight, and all the hunting just seemed like running now, running with no finish line ahead and no clear sense of what was chasing them. So, he came back to the knowledge that he'd been hiding from himself and allowing his brother to hide from him. He needed the truth, all of it, if only so he could try to wash away the hollow look that sometimes sat just behind Sam's eyes these days. He couldn't help anyone if he kept pretending that there was no problem for him to help with, that Sam didn't need and deserve more from him.
Sighing, he turned away from his brother, eyes scanning the empty motel parking lot with patches lit by moonlight and yellow-orange streetlight, and he finally let go of pretending. He wouldn't keep lying to himself if every minute he spent in denial was one more that Sam spent hurting and alone.
"Dean?" Sam's voice behind him sounded groggy and more than a little confused.
"Yeah." He knew he sounded tired, resigned, but he wasn't sure that he could be anything else right then.
"Everything okay?" It almost felt wrong for Sam to be concerned about him when there was so much going on in his own life right then.
"No. It's really not." He turned back toward the beds and his brother.
"What's wrong?" Sam propped himself up on one elbow, his other hand carding through his hair as his brow creased and his eyes began to lose the blur of sleep.
"Tell me everything you know."
Sam's fingers stilled in his hair, eyes suddenly clearer as he looked at his brother. "About what?"
Dean shrugged a little. "About what you found, the kids like you, the Demon, whatever, just … everything."
Sam yawned and stretched, ruffling his hair again before dropping his head back onto the pillow, eyes closed, seemingly intent to ignore him. "Dean." It was a weary groan. "It's like 3 am. Can't we do this some other time?"
"No, I don't think we can, Sam. I don't know what's going on right now - with you or out there - and I think it's time." He nodded, swallowing but resolute. "I need to know now."
Sam opened his eyes, but looked at the ceiling instead of his brother. "You never like my answers."
"That doesn't make them less important." Hell, it probably made them more important.
"What's changed?" Surprisingly, the words didn't have any air of suspicion, just curiosity.
He shrugged, letting his reasons edge around his thoughts without entering them. "I don't know. Just- …"
"Lies." Sam's face scrunched as he laughed mirthlessly. "Why should I tell you anything when your default mode is lies?"
Dean was quiet, his mouth unwilling to form words that would bring his nightmares into reality. "… I can smell it."
Inhaling deep and then letting it out slow, Sam nodded, knowing. "The fire."
"Yeah." He felt his chest shake, his emotions caged, but he wouldn't let himself remember running, the heat and the smell as his arms pulled Sam to safety, the infant and the man.
"I didn't want to freak you out." It sounded like the words hurt, like if his brother was less well-put-together, he might shudder and shed tears from this confession alone.
"You should've bought yourself some cigarettes." He tried to think about laughing, but he couldn't. He was only half-joking.
"I don't like having to lie to you."
"You don't have to lie to me."
Sam's lips slid into a hard line, jaw clenching as his voice gained strength, harsh. "So you're not planning to put me down like Dad would want you to?"
Dean just shook his head, knowing that would never be an option. "I couldn't do that, Sam. You know that."
"Sure you could." He was nodding subtly, shrugging like it didn't matter, and Dean tried not to feel shredded on the inside. "You're stronger than that. You're a real soldier, a real Hunter. If it was me or the world, you would choose the world."
"That's not a scenario I plan to be in." Certainly not if Sam was just going to lay there and wait for him to finish it like this was just about hunters and demons and not about loyalty and love.
"No, of course not." Sam sighed like he'd discovered something or remembered something he'd previously forgotten. "You'd rather be a martyr."
Dean opened his mouth to contradict the long line of assumptions and misunderstandings, but he realized that the conversation had been diverted, perhaps purposefully, into a game of verbal tennis that didn't really give him any information. "Just tell me what you know."
It was quiet for a long time and Dean almost asked again, but then Sam was talking, the tone of his voice calculated and casual as if he was just reading random tidbits from the dictionary. "Funny thing about hybrids, depending on your methods they can just be some middle ground between things or they can actually start having new traits. Well, in biology anyway. When you start mixing spiritual, mystical, energies, things get even more complicated."
"What does that mean?"
"I'm a hybrid. Any good mystic can tell that I have a- … let's call it an 'off-color' soul. Missouri could see it. She just didn't tell me - not until I went back, anyway. Turns out that my aura has dark spots in it like a rotten vegetable, because I'm rotting from the inside out. My body is basically human, but my essence is … something else … something that really shouldn't exist." His words came to a full stop as if they'd been in an orderly march before.
"Because of the Demon."
"Yeah."
Dean nodded, dealing, but he shifted on the wooden chair as if anything could really make this conversation more comfortable. "Why would he do that?"
"Isn't it obvious?" Sam rolled to face him, his eyes empty and hard, his voice almost smug. "You could put a bullet in my head … maybe … if I let you … but circles of salt won't keep me out, devil's traps won't keep me in, holy water doesn't burn, and Latin glides on my tongue. Yet …" He tilted his head, breathing in wonder as his lips began to curve upward. "There's still all this power, like fire in the palm of my hands. I'd call that a supersoldier, wouldn’t you?" Sam's attitude coated his words as if they were just facts, as plain as orange-colored oranges, and not distressing or in any way available for re-interpretation.
Dean couldn't squash his involuntary shudder, but he shouldered on anyway. "But you have choice, a mind of your own. You don't have to do anything that you don't want to do."
Sam laid back to stare at the ceiling again, breathing deep and taking his time. "Have you ever heard of the Nephilim?"
Dean ransacked his memory, but came up mostly empty, scratching the back of his head. "Maybe."
"Different people say different things, but, supposedly, there was a band of angels who fell eons ago and they mated with human women who birthed these terrible half-demon, half-human giants called nephilim."
Dean kind of remembered those stories, maybe - giants eating humans and joining their Fallen fathers in teaching humanity all the joys and pains of war. Some even thought Goliath of the age-old story was a descendent of that kind. Swallowing, he remembered that none of those stories seemed to end well - not for the giants, at least.
Something slid down the muscles of his brother's body like he couldn't be still with more words trapped inside. "They're the ones who God was thought to be drowning, along with all the bad humans, during the Great Flood."
Dean wanted to be able to keep this professional and intellectual more than personal and emotional, but this was his baby brother, his partner, his Sam, and the words tasted retch-worthy, like sour chalk on his tongue. "So you're a … nephilim."
"I wish." Sam laughed bitterly and it made Dean's ears ache even though he knew that wasn't really what Sam wished at all. "Technically? No. As far as I can tell, the Nephilim were primarily biological hybrids. Everyone can agree that they basically had two parents from different species, so their bodies were strange, large, strong, and their appetites were big, but the question of whether or not they had powers and what kind is still pretty unclear. My parents were both human, so only my soul was fundamentally altered, which means that I'm … something else."
"What?" He felt like he was holding his breath.
"A freak, maybe with a capital 'F'." Sam snickered and Dean's stomach wrenched like there was milk curdling inside. "Among those of us who talk about such things, there isn't really any other term that fits. If you want something more specific, though, I'd say it’s not exactly PC to call Azazel a 'demon', so the most applicable label would probably be … 'part-Fallen freak' - as in fallen angel."
"So- … I think you lost me." Dean took a moment to rest his eyes as his temples throbbed, working to integrate all the new information. "I mean … biological, spiritual, seems like the only real difference is the powers, so just … use them for good." His forehead scrunched as he opened his eyes wearily, realizing just how much of a twisted comic book his life seemed to have become.
"Wrong." Sam's mouth was bent downwards sharply. "Biological links can fairly easily be severed. Spiritual links are much harder to break and this was not incidental. … Why go to all this trouble to create something you can't control?"
The silence was charged around them like they were breathing in radioactive ions and it seemed to stretch on and on.
"Can he track you?" His voice only barely leaked into the air and there was a chill up his back like if he turned around, there'd be yellow eyes peering in wickedly from the other side of the salted window.
"No need."
His heart beat once in his throat. "What does that mean?"
"Imagine two rooms separated by a wall. In one room is my mind, and in the other is the Fallen egregore, a well of common power, both bottomless and overflowing." Sam swallowed, but the words came out smoothly, as if something that should be new, confusing, and strange had somehow already become wholly mundane. "When I was a kid, there was only a little hole in the wall, but its gotten bigger as I've gotten older and every time my mind accesses its own powers it acts like a magnet, pulling more power into my room from the other room, widening the hole. The only thing mediating my access to the well is my Fallen patron and he has little interest in restricting my access right now. So, eventually the hole will be big enough to cause a flood into my room and maybe someday the wall will wash away completely."
"Then stop using your powers." He'd known they were bad news from the start and Dad had too.
"I've tried that." Sam's sigh held the exasperation of a witness who'd been over things with eight different detectives already. "It doesn't really work. My powers are a part of me. It would be like me telling you to stop using your hands. You could try to drive and hunt and everything else with your wrists and elbows instead, but you'd probably just injure yourself." He gritted his teeth, voice shaking for a moment before steadying again. "The more I fight things, the more insistent - and painful - they become. That's why my visions used to hurt and why they don't tend to hurt anymore. I think the ache happens when the additional power has to punch its way through the wall, but … I don't really know. I'm not sure anyone does."
Demonic power was reaching out to augment his brother's abilities; he got that, but as much as he hated being ineffectual, being in retreat, he still couldn't understand why running wouldn't be enough, at least for a while. "That's just about power, though, about giving you more power, and maybe I don't like it or think it's a good thing, but …. what does it have to do with him tracking you?"
Sam's hands were up in argument mode, even while he lay on the bed, as he visibly strained to keep from yelling out whatever he thought was obvious. "Why track what will eventually come to you?"
"But you don't have to go, Sam." Yawning, Dean shook his head, his brain's need for sleep conveniently catching him most strongly when he least wanted to think. "You have a choice."
"No!" Sam sputtered, huffing loudly before pressing fingers to his temples and closing his eyes. "This is how we started this conversation, but since you've still not pieced it all together, here's the ending to the story: one day, I will be more Fallen than human because I will be impossibly tangled up in the common well of power. … I will be lost." The words were heavy, meant to drill through protective barriers and sink all the way in. "And it won't just be me. I'm not that important, but with so many of us falling? The whole world will be lost."
When Sam turned to look at him again, Dean saw how dark his eyes had gone, how the light in them had dimmed, and he finally understood what had felt so wrong with Sam around lately. Sam really believed every single word that he'd just said. He'd totally given up on fighting this twisted destiny of his and just took it as an inevitability, a truth about an inflexible future.
"I don't believe in lost." Dean's jaw set with determination as he shook his head. "Lost means that I'd have to lose you in the first place and even if I did, I'd just go find you."
"You didn't find me the last time."
Dean couldn't tell if that was a challenge or an accusation, but it didn't matter anymore. He knew the path ahead. "You didn't want to be found. This time- …"
"How do you know this time would be any different?"
"Because I know you. You don't like other people bossing you around, let alone some psychotic demon hive-mind."
"That simple, huh?" Sam allowed himself to laugh, softly but truly, as Dean tilted his head and quirked an eyebrow knowingly.
"That simple."
"Maybe." The tension in the room seemed to dissipate as Sam flopped onto his back once again with an argument-ending sigh. "Maybe."
"Definitely." Dean got up from his chair by the window with the start of a smile on his lips and walked around to look down at his brother. "Scoot over."
Sam rolled his eyes but made room and Dean climbed in.
"Now, you can go back to sleep."
"Good, 'cause the sun will be up in a minute."
Dean snorted, curling and stretching into a comfortable position, and it was a long time before either of them spoke again. He was already half asleep when his last question slipped out, mumbled and slurred. "So you smell like smoke 'cause- … what? … You've been burnin' up trees in the forest or somethin'?"
"Yeah, Dean. Don't worry." Sam stroked his hair softly as both their breaths slowed towards sleep. "It's all just trees in the forest."
Author: eboniorchid
Fandom: Supernatural
Characters: Sam Winchester/Dean Winchester
Prompt: "081-Relieved " for 100moods, challenge table here.
Word Count: ~4,000 words.
Rating: PG-13 for mentions of violence and sexuality.
Warnings/Spoilers: Angst. Future. Manipulation. Established relationship. Slash. Mentions of m/m sex and violence. Character study. Plot. AU after "Simon Said". Potential spoilers through "Simon Said".
Disclaimer: I own nothing. Really. Nothing.
Summary: Dean knows that they're in trouble when he's the one deciding that they need to have a talk.
Betas: Thanks be to L <3, brynwulf, and dragojustine, who kicked my ass around town to get this all tightened up nicely.
Author's Notes: I'd say "wow, that was fast (for me)!" but this was supershort and mostly done ages ago, so I shant kid myself. It's a really important piece, though, so don't skip it if you don't have to. Follows not long after "Plain Gold Band" (NC-17, Slash/Het: Sam/Dean, Dean/OFC, Dean/OMC) // For more info about my Evil!Sammy Universe, including links to all installments, please go here.
Color Contacts
No. … No. … No! … Dean! "… NO!"
Bleary-eyed but determined, Dean was rolling out of his bed and crouching beside his brother's before he'd even fully woken up. He wiped his mouth as he blinked down at Sam, who was tangled tightly in the sheets and curled up as if the amount of clear bed space was directly related to the size of his nightmare.
"Sam?" He put his hand on his brother's tense shoulder, making his presence felt before shaking it a little. "Sam, wake up!"
If anything, Sam's eyes only screwed down tighter, but his voice returned to something quiet, almost forlorn. "No. … No. … Please- …" He stopped himself, shaking his head in jerks as the lines of his face became wrinkled with strain. "Can't- … No. … Not strong enough. I- … No."
The 'not strong enough' knocked Dean's thoughts in another direction, his brain bringing up memories of Sam on the floor in some town in California, damn near losing his mind. He'd been awake then, but this terror sounded almost exactly the same. "Sam! It's just a vision. I'm right here."
Sam shook his head slowly, as if disbelieving Dean's words, and continued to mumble 'no' and 'can't' and 'not strong enough'.
"Sam, come on. You can hear me. You know I'm right here. You can do this."
"No- … … … Why?" Sam croaked the word as if it took all his energy to pull himself out of the endless loop even just for a moment.
"Because I want you here, need you here."
"Lie- …" It was a plaintive word.
"No, Sam, I swear- …"
"Lie. … Don't want. … No good." Sam's whispers and tears made Dean's throat ache and he couldn't interrupt again as some part of his brother fought to communicate. "Left. … Away. … Fight. … Alone. … Not strong enough. … Can't- … Please- … No. … No! … No! … NO!"
Sam shot up to sitting as he shouted, awake and shaking with anger despite the tears that were still streaming down his face. "Get away from me!" He threw off the covers and his brother's hands, heat radiating from him in a way that Dean couldn't deny as he paced to the far end of the room, breathing hard before snapping back around to go through his bag and begin donning clothes.
"Sam." Dean was cautious and working to be patient, but the importance of the information, the urgency that he could feel, made the question imperative. "What did you see?"
"Nothing. A bad dream. Doesn't matter." He sniffed and wiped his face, always looking away as he continued yanking on his clothes.
"No, it wasn't. You were talking in your sleep, like when you had that vision back in California." Dean took a step towards his brother, the floor creaking underfoot, making Sam flinch. "What did you see?"
Sam shoved his feet into socks, then into shoes, tying them violently, as if ripping them would be just as useful as making them into bows and knots. "None of your business."
"Yeah, it is. My name was in there."
"Lucky you, but it still doesn't make it your business." Sam never looked at him as he headed for the door and opened it to the dark night, slamming it shut on his words. "Not everything is about you, Dean."
Dean huffed out something sigh-like, his head dropping back on his shoulders as he quickly ran over his options, finally deciding not to follow Sam. He was jittery, but the bulk of the tension had walked out with his brother, which probably meant time spent apart would be better than forced time together. The rule he'd set for himself since December was not to wait up, though. Sam wandered at night far more than healthy, but Dean did most of the driving, so Sam had the luxury of sleeping on the road more. They just couldn't afford for both of them to be half asleep all the time. Still, this night felt different. It had his blood zipping through his system, so he sat up - not waiting, of course, but awake - and flicked through too many minutes of bad late-night TV.
Three hours later, Sam came back through the door, just as Dean's eyelids were beginning to droop, and the smell of smoke lingered in his wake, faintly covering another scent that Dean couldn't - or maybe didn't want to - place. "You taking up cigarettes, Sam?"
Sam let his lips tilt into something that could have been an angry smile as he walked further into the room and kicked off his shoes. "I don't smoke. Not that it's any of your business."
"Hey." Dean's eyebrows tipped downwards before rising with the attempted lightness of his tone. "Maybe I just want to bum a smoke."
"You aren't drunk enough."
Dean just shrugged and let things quiet again, the television mixing its chatter and laugh tracks with the rest of the white noise in the room. As Sam stripped down to his boxers, though, Dean opened his mouth to start the conversation again.
Sam immediately squashed his intentions. "Don't. I don't want to be lectured and I don't want to be interrogated, so if you want a fist in the face, then please … keep talking."
Dean huffed, shaking his head as he thought, bemused, about taking a crack across the jaw from Sam. He shivered, though, when the heat in the room spiked and he realized that Sam was right there beside his bed.
"Did you not understand me the first time? I'm really not in the mood for this tonight."
"You're being ridiculous, Sam." Dean looked up from the dark spot he'd been eyeing on the ancient TV box. "I'm not even … doing anything." His last two words were slower as he took in the intensity that his brother was pressing into the air around them.
"Can you only shut up when someone stuffs something in your mouth?" Sam's teeth clenched in the façade of a smile. "'Cause I'm not really in the mood for that either."
Dean shook his head and looked away, running his fingers through his hair restlessly. "Whatever."
"Go to bed." Sam reached past him to turn out the light, then climbed into his own bed, facing away from him. After a long moment of watching his brother, Dean did the same, stretching out and breathing in the stale scent of sheets as if to make his nose forget and let his churning mind sleep.
It was two months before he smelled it again and again it came with the vision. Then one month passed before Sam came in with the same smell, but without the warning nightmare. Then it was only two weeks, then one, and when it started to become a constant, like the smell of leather, gun oil, and beer, Dean couldn't shut his brain down anymore. He'd already gone through Sam's bag four times over the past month and never once found a pack of smokes.
Sometimes he wished he was an idiot. It seemed like it would be easier.
Watching Sam sleep, Dean could feel his shoulders falling, collapsing in on himself as he tried not to think about why Sam being here after all this time somehow hurt more, almost, than when he'd been away. It was like there were pieces missing or broken, like Sam was wounded in places Dean couldn't see and Sam wouldn't show him. He'd tried to believe that Sam had really spent all those months just looking for answers, doing construction and odd jobs here and there, avoiding him - and maybe he had - but there was so much more to the story than the bits that Dean had heard so far.
Sam had said that his search for answers had turned up something, more than they'd known before, and he'd share it when he was ready, but if this attitude, this distance, this aching, was what came of those answers, then Dean almost wished that his brother had never found out. He was trying to hurtle his own fear and be strong, knowing that his own insecurities were continuing to push Sam away, making him think that he had to walk the road alone. Yet it was hard to do more than refuse to look, just like he had before Sam ran away, because the truth could be ugly enough to destroy them both.
What else did they have now, though? His plan to the kill the Demon - Azazel, Sam had called him - was on the rocks, no leads in sight, and all the hunting just seemed like running now, running with no finish line ahead and no clear sense of what was chasing them. So, he came back to the knowledge that he'd been hiding from himself and allowing his brother to hide from him. He needed the truth, all of it, if only so he could try to wash away the hollow look that sometimes sat just behind Sam's eyes these days. He couldn't help anyone if he kept pretending that there was no problem for him to help with, that Sam didn't need and deserve more from him.
Sighing, he turned away from his brother, eyes scanning the empty motel parking lot with patches lit by moonlight and yellow-orange streetlight, and he finally let go of pretending. He wouldn't keep lying to himself if every minute he spent in denial was one more that Sam spent hurting and alone.
"Dean?" Sam's voice behind him sounded groggy and more than a little confused.
"Yeah." He knew he sounded tired, resigned, but he wasn't sure that he could be anything else right then.
"Everything okay?" It almost felt wrong for Sam to be concerned about him when there was so much going on in his own life right then.
"No. It's really not." He turned back toward the beds and his brother.
"What's wrong?" Sam propped himself up on one elbow, his other hand carding through his hair as his brow creased and his eyes began to lose the blur of sleep.
"Tell me everything you know."
Sam's fingers stilled in his hair, eyes suddenly clearer as he looked at his brother. "About what?"
Dean shrugged a little. "About what you found, the kids like you, the Demon, whatever, just … everything."
Sam yawned and stretched, ruffling his hair again before dropping his head back onto the pillow, eyes closed, seemingly intent to ignore him. "Dean." It was a weary groan. "It's like 3 am. Can't we do this some other time?"
"No, I don't think we can, Sam. I don't know what's going on right now - with you or out there - and I think it's time." He nodded, swallowing but resolute. "I need to know now."
Sam opened his eyes, but looked at the ceiling instead of his brother. "You never like my answers."
"That doesn't make them less important." Hell, it probably made them more important.
"What's changed?" Surprisingly, the words didn't have any air of suspicion, just curiosity.
He shrugged, letting his reasons edge around his thoughts without entering them. "I don't know. Just- …"
"Lies." Sam's face scrunched as he laughed mirthlessly. "Why should I tell you anything when your default mode is lies?"
Dean was quiet, his mouth unwilling to form words that would bring his nightmares into reality. "… I can smell it."
Inhaling deep and then letting it out slow, Sam nodded, knowing. "The fire."
"Yeah." He felt his chest shake, his emotions caged, but he wouldn't let himself remember running, the heat and the smell as his arms pulled Sam to safety, the infant and the man.
"I didn't want to freak you out." It sounded like the words hurt, like if his brother was less well-put-together, he might shudder and shed tears from this confession alone.
"You should've bought yourself some cigarettes." He tried to think about laughing, but he couldn't. He was only half-joking.
"I don't like having to lie to you."
"You don't have to lie to me."
Sam's lips slid into a hard line, jaw clenching as his voice gained strength, harsh. "So you're not planning to put me down like Dad would want you to?"
Dean just shook his head, knowing that would never be an option. "I couldn't do that, Sam. You know that."
"Sure you could." He was nodding subtly, shrugging like it didn't matter, and Dean tried not to feel shredded on the inside. "You're stronger than that. You're a real soldier, a real Hunter. If it was me or the world, you would choose the world."
"That's not a scenario I plan to be in." Certainly not if Sam was just going to lay there and wait for him to finish it like this was just about hunters and demons and not about loyalty and love.
"No, of course not." Sam sighed like he'd discovered something or remembered something he'd previously forgotten. "You'd rather be a martyr."
Dean opened his mouth to contradict the long line of assumptions and misunderstandings, but he realized that the conversation had been diverted, perhaps purposefully, into a game of verbal tennis that didn't really give him any information. "Just tell me what you know."
It was quiet for a long time and Dean almost asked again, but then Sam was talking, the tone of his voice calculated and casual as if he was just reading random tidbits from the dictionary. "Funny thing about hybrids, depending on your methods they can just be some middle ground between things or they can actually start having new traits. Well, in biology anyway. When you start mixing spiritual, mystical, energies, things get even more complicated."
"What does that mean?"
"I'm a hybrid. Any good mystic can tell that I have a- … let's call it an 'off-color' soul. Missouri could see it. She just didn't tell me - not until I went back, anyway. Turns out that my aura has dark spots in it like a rotten vegetable, because I'm rotting from the inside out. My body is basically human, but my essence is … something else … something that really shouldn't exist." His words came to a full stop as if they'd been in an orderly march before.
"Because of the Demon."
"Yeah."
Dean nodded, dealing, but he shifted on the wooden chair as if anything could really make this conversation more comfortable. "Why would he do that?"
"Isn't it obvious?" Sam rolled to face him, his eyes empty and hard, his voice almost smug. "You could put a bullet in my head … maybe … if I let you … but circles of salt won't keep me out, devil's traps won't keep me in, holy water doesn't burn, and Latin glides on my tongue. Yet …" He tilted his head, breathing in wonder as his lips began to curve upward. "There's still all this power, like fire in the palm of my hands. I'd call that a supersoldier, wouldn’t you?" Sam's attitude coated his words as if they were just facts, as plain as orange-colored oranges, and not distressing or in any way available for re-interpretation.
Dean couldn't squash his involuntary shudder, but he shouldered on anyway. "But you have choice, a mind of your own. You don't have to do anything that you don't want to do."
Sam laid back to stare at the ceiling again, breathing deep and taking his time. "Have you ever heard of the Nephilim?"
Dean ransacked his memory, but came up mostly empty, scratching the back of his head. "Maybe."
"Different people say different things, but, supposedly, there was a band of angels who fell eons ago and they mated with human women who birthed these terrible half-demon, half-human giants called nephilim."
Dean kind of remembered those stories, maybe - giants eating humans and joining their Fallen fathers in teaching humanity all the joys and pains of war. Some even thought Goliath of the age-old story was a descendent of that kind. Swallowing, he remembered that none of those stories seemed to end well - not for the giants, at least.
Something slid down the muscles of his brother's body like he couldn't be still with more words trapped inside. "They're the ones who God was thought to be drowning, along with all the bad humans, during the Great Flood."
Dean wanted to be able to keep this professional and intellectual more than personal and emotional, but this was his baby brother, his partner, his Sam, and the words tasted retch-worthy, like sour chalk on his tongue. "So you're a … nephilim."
"I wish." Sam laughed bitterly and it made Dean's ears ache even though he knew that wasn't really what Sam wished at all. "Technically? No. As far as I can tell, the Nephilim were primarily biological hybrids. Everyone can agree that they basically had two parents from different species, so their bodies were strange, large, strong, and their appetites were big, but the question of whether or not they had powers and what kind is still pretty unclear. My parents were both human, so only my soul was fundamentally altered, which means that I'm … something else."
"What?" He felt like he was holding his breath.
"A freak, maybe with a capital 'F'." Sam snickered and Dean's stomach wrenched like there was milk curdling inside. "Among those of us who talk about such things, there isn't really any other term that fits. If you want something more specific, though, I'd say it’s not exactly PC to call Azazel a 'demon', so the most applicable label would probably be … 'part-Fallen freak' - as in fallen angel."
"So- … I think you lost me." Dean took a moment to rest his eyes as his temples throbbed, working to integrate all the new information. "I mean … biological, spiritual, seems like the only real difference is the powers, so just … use them for good." His forehead scrunched as he opened his eyes wearily, realizing just how much of a twisted comic book his life seemed to have become.
"Wrong." Sam's mouth was bent downwards sharply. "Biological links can fairly easily be severed. Spiritual links are much harder to break and this was not incidental. … Why go to all this trouble to create something you can't control?"
The silence was charged around them like they were breathing in radioactive ions and it seemed to stretch on and on.
"Can he track you?" His voice only barely leaked into the air and there was a chill up his back like if he turned around, there'd be yellow eyes peering in wickedly from the other side of the salted window.
"No need."
His heart beat once in his throat. "What does that mean?"
"Imagine two rooms separated by a wall. In one room is my mind, and in the other is the Fallen egregore, a well of common power, both bottomless and overflowing." Sam swallowed, but the words came out smoothly, as if something that should be new, confusing, and strange had somehow already become wholly mundane. "When I was a kid, there was only a little hole in the wall, but its gotten bigger as I've gotten older and every time my mind accesses its own powers it acts like a magnet, pulling more power into my room from the other room, widening the hole. The only thing mediating my access to the well is my Fallen patron and he has little interest in restricting my access right now. So, eventually the hole will be big enough to cause a flood into my room and maybe someday the wall will wash away completely."
"Then stop using your powers." He'd known they were bad news from the start and Dad had too.
"I've tried that." Sam's sigh held the exasperation of a witness who'd been over things with eight different detectives already. "It doesn't really work. My powers are a part of me. It would be like me telling you to stop using your hands. You could try to drive and hunt and everything else with your wrists and elbows instead, but you'd probably just injure yourself." He gritted his teeth, voice shaking for a moment before steadying again. "The more I fight things, the more insistent - and painful - they become. That's why my visions used to hurt and why they don't tend to hurt anymore. I think the ache happens when the additional power has to punch its way through the wall, but … I don't really know. I'm not sure anyone does."
Demonic power was reaching out to augment his brother's abilities; he got that, but as much as he hated being ineffectual, being in retreat, he still couldn't understand why running wouldn't be enough, at least for a while. "That's just about power, though, about giving you more power, and maybe I don't like it or think it's a good thing, but …. what does it have to do with him tracking you?"
Sam's hands were up in argument mode, even while he lay on the bed, as he visibly strained to keep from yelling out whatever he thought was obvious. "Why track what will eventually come to you?"
"But you don't have to go, Sam." Yawning, Dean shook his head, his brain's need for sleep conveniently catching him most strongly when he least wanted to think. "You have a choice."
"No!" Sam sputtered, huffing loudly before pressing fingers to his temples and closing his eyes. "This is how we started this conversation, but since you've still not pieced it all together, here's the ending to the story: one day, I will be more Fallen than human because I will be impossibly tangled up in the common well of power. … I will be lost." The words were heavy, meant to drill through protective barriers and sink all the way in. "And it won't just be me. I'm not that important, but with so many of us falling? The whole world will be lost."
When Sam turned to look at him again, Dean saw how dark his eyes had gone, how the light in them had dimmed, and he finally understood what had felt so wrong with Sam around lately. Sam really believed every single word that he'd just said. He'd totally given up on fighting this twisted destiny of his and just took it as an inevitability, a truth about an inflexible future.
"I don't believe in lost." Dean's jaw set with determination as he shook his head. "Lost means that I'd have to lose you in the first place and even if I did, I'd just go find you."
"You didn't find me the last time."
Dean couldn't tell if that was a challenge or an accusation, but it didn't matter anymore. He knew the path ahead. "You didn't want to be found. This time- …"
"How do you know this time would be any different?"
"Because I know you. You don't like other people bossing you around, let alone some psychotic demon hive-mind."
"That simple, huh?" Sam allowed himself to laugh, softly but truly, as Dean tilted his head and quirked an eyebrow knowingly.
"That simple."
"Maybe." The tension in the room seemed to dissipate as Sam flopped onto his back once again with an argument-ending sigh. "Maybe."
"Definitely." Dean got up from his chair by the window with the start of a smile on his lips and walked around to look down at his brother. "Scoot over."
Sam rolled his eyes but made room and Dean climbed in.
"Now, you can go back to sleep."
"Good, 'cause the sun will be up in a minute."
Dean snorted, curling and stretching into a comfortable position, and it was a long time before either of them spoke again. He was already half asleep when his last question slipped out, mumbled and slurred. "So you smell like smoke 'cause- … what? … You've been burnin' up trees in the forest or somethin'?"
"Yeah, Dean. Don't worry." Sam stroked his hair softly as both their breaths slowed towards sleep. "It's all just trees in the forest."