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SPN, NC-17. Part 1. Part 2. Part 3.
They still needed to go to bars when they wanted to make a semi-legal buck. Sam might have had a few more shots on average now that he was spending so much quality time with toilets. Dean could neither afford that, as spirits apparently took badly to whiskey dick, nor could he admit to Sam that he wanted some temporary oblivion. But even that wasn’t much of a change; Dean didn’t generally drink to get drunk, not when he was around Sam.
He didn’t even do anything to discourage the girls, the ones who accumulated around him like crumpled-up bar napkins. He didn’t seek them out, but he never had. He bought them drinks once they’d approached him and smiled at them without showing his teeth, same as ever. Just, at the end of the night (always before midnight now, and that meant endless jokes about turning into a pumpkin, each girl always smiling as if she were the first one to have thought of it) he’d go home with Sam instead.
Sam didn’t get why Dean pretended that any of them had a chance with him, and Dean didn’t do much to explain. Keeping in practice, he said. Sam thought maybe it was Dean’s way of saying to himself that nothing had really changed. That if he didn’t take one of those girls out to the back and have her up against the wall, it was only because he didn’t want to. Or maybe vice versa, to the extent Sam understood Dean’s bizarre philosophy of the material world.
****
For reasons both good and bad, Bobby wasn’t going to help him use his gifts to help Dean, so Sam made do in other ways. Dean and Bobby liked to pretend otherwise, but Sam remembered plenty from the old days; Meg hadn’t killed every contact Sam knew. In fact, the ones she’d let live tended to be just the ones Sam needed to talk to for his current endeavors.
Possibly that ought to have bothered him.
The good news was that restoring his powers turned out to be a lot like fixing the plumbing in an abandoned building. The structure was there, but the pipes were gummed. Some of them were broken, others just needed a good hard whack.
But the power didn’t have anything to hold on to, not directly. So the next step was to trace the problem to its source.
One of the sorcerer’s books was a variant of Liber Juratus with an expanded, hand-annotated section on using demon powers to perform mortal tasks. The ink was brown and faded, and when Sam ran his fingers over the pages, they felt almost sticky. He thought he’d probably get rid of the book when this was over.
Sam hadn’t said much to Dean about his plans, but at this point Dean’s assistance might be required, or maybe Dean would get some satisfaction out of helping. When he was ready, he waited to explain until they’d just absorbed a big lunch and Dean was pretending to clean his knives but really just dozing in front of the television.
“That’s blood magic,” Dean said before he finished, in the tone that said ‘no way’ and meant it. He sat up straight and began sliding the knives back into their sheaths and cases.
Sam had been prepared for that objection. “Not death magic. Blood’s not inherently good or bad. It’s just power.”
“Yeah,” Dean said, still meaning ‘no way.’ “Who you planning to cut?”
“My blood’ll work fine.”
Dean tested the edge of an athame against his nail. “Dude, you sure as hell ain’t the pretty one, so when did you get stupid?”
Controlling a spell of that magnitude was hard enough at full capacity. Woozy with blood loss was a handicap that few witches (or warlocks, if you wanted to say that was what Sam was proposing to become) would risk.
“I’m certain that it will get us the answers we need, Dean.” He put his absolute faith into his voice, and Dean finally lifted his head. The past months had carved the faint lines around Dean’s eyes and his mouth into permanent additions. If anything, Dean looked better like this, the smile lines and crow’s feet working with the stubble to roughen the prettiness of his face into something utterly gorgeous, unmistakably a man rather than a boy.
Sam glanced away, embarrassed, just as Dean spoke. “If you’re so certain, if it means that much, then we’ll use my blood.”
“Fine,” Sam said. Dean looked surprised that Sam hadn’t put up more of a fight. But Sam wouldn’t need much more than a pint, and Dean could do that while running and shooting, as Sam knew for a fact.
****
They sat cross-legged facing one another, the large ritual basin in between them. It was lacquered red on the outside and black on the inside. Sam was aware there was a theory behind the colors, but he didn’t really care. From above, Sam realized, they formed the shape of a winking eye, two carets bracketing a circle. He wondered what housekeeping would think when they came in to clean up the mess. The only rituals usually performed in an anonymous Days Inn room like this had very little to do with witchcraft.
“Give me your left arm,” Sam ordered. The bandages were waiting, piled up to one side, along with a pint of orange juice and a plastic tub of the Trader Joe’s three-ginger cookies that Dean pretended not to like.
Dean stuck his arm out with an aggrieved sigh. “You know, with that makeup on, you look like a clown. Think you’ll scare yourself out of your pants?”
Sam ignored him. The blue, red and black face paint was admittedly odd-looking, but no matter the hue of the magic you were calling up, witchcraft was about respect. The ritual had face paint in it; ergo, Sam was using face paint. He had raw power to burn, but his only hope of channeling it into a divination was to follow instructions.
Carefully, he smoothed the salve over the flesh of Dean’s inner arm, ignoring Dean’s quite justified protests about how bad it smelled. He said the words of blessing over the knife, and thanked Dean for his willing sacrifice. He did it in Latin, just so Dean wouldn’t add that to his bitch list. Then he sliced across Dean’s forearm, just below the crook of his elbow. He turned Dean’s arm so that the blood spilled down over his skin, a shining red cuff, and into the bowl.
The things already in the bowl were as shriveled as raisins, but when the blood covered them it was as if he’d poured water on sodium. The explosion blanked Sam’s vision, and the smoke took a few seconds to dissipate after that. Dean swore while Sam coughed, the days-dead taste unbelievably foul on his tongue. When he managed to wipe the irritated tears from his eyes, he saw that the bowl had cracked into three perfectly regular pieces. They reminded him of a biohazard sign, lying there on the floor.
He remembered himself and grabbed Dean’s arm, using butterfly bandages to hold the wound closed and then covering it with gauze, wrapping it carefully as he cleaned off the still-sticky blood. Dean didn’t protest, watching Sam as if he might explode like one of the spell pellets.
“Did it work?” Dean asked when Sam let him go.
“Let’s see,” Sam said. “Drink that,” he ordered absently, shoving the orange juice at Dean. Then he got up and unfolded the map of the United States onto the nearest bed.
“Why?” he asked.
After a second, a pinprick of white light appeared in the air above his head, growing slowly until it was the size of a bumblebee and darkening in color until it was a sick, mushroomy yellow. Then it floated delicately over the map, swinging in circles, tighter and tighter until it settled just over a spot in the East.
Sam double-checked so as not to make any mistake. Alewife, Massachusetts.
“Lacey,” he said, considering, then started to refold the map. Dean was inspecting him like he was a car crash and Dean was stuck in the gaper delay. But Dean was also stuffing cookies into his mouth, so Sam wasn’t going to complain. He started to pack, shoving clothes randomly into his duffel.
They were in the middle of Pennsylvania, and they had a long drive ahead of them.
****
The guidelight returned when they hit 95, hovering at the upper edge of Sam’s vision. It took them unerringly towards the town, then through streets that seemed familiar (but then, some days they all seemed familiar), and finally to a large Victorian painted cake-yellow.
Their timing was good. It would have been awkward to march into her place of work and—and get her to fix whatever she’d done.
Dean shut off the engine, but he didn’t leave the car as Sam got out and slammed the door, not quite hard enough to draw a rebuke from Dean. Sam walked around to the driver’s side. Dean was just sitting there, his hand still on the ignition. “You don’t have to come in if you don’t want to,” he told Dean, keeping his voice absolutely neutral.
Dean shook himself, almost invisibly, and swung the door open so that Sam had to step back. Sam waited as Dean checked his weapons, and then they started up the flagstone walkway. The front garden was full of purple flowers and delicate frog-green fronds. Sam recognized a lot of the plants, and assumed that the others also had witchery purposes.
Their feet made hollow sounds on the old wooden stairs. Sam pressed the doorbell, and they waited.
Lacey answered, her face already lighting with pleasure as she opened the door. She was still in her business clothes, a bright green skirt suit with a mint shell underneath, and her hair was pulled back in a twist. Nothing about her screamed ‘evil, life-destroying witch.’ “You should have called!” she said. The guidelight flared more brightly in her presence. She noticed it, and her expression became uncertain. “What’s that?”
“May we come in?” Sam said, and pushed past her. Dean, his lips compressed and his jaw tight, followed. Lacey turned, her face showing nothing but confusion. Sam allowed her to close the door behind them.
“Dean,” Lacey appealed, “what’s going on? Did you figure out what was wrong?”
Dean’s mouth twitched. “We were hoping you’d explain that.”
She rocked back a step. “I don’t know—”
Sam had been sitting in the car for over five hours, thinking about how this would go. He was not in the mood for denial.
Azazel’s aims had been rotten all the way through, but he’d had a firm grasp of the theatrical fundamentals. Sam nodded. Lacey’s body slammed back against her blue-and-white striped wallpaper, rattling the family portraits to either side of her. He kept her pinned for a second, then let her slide down to her feet.
She wobbled and swept one hand up, her lips already forming some cantrip. Sam clenched his fist. Her mouth squeezed up like someone was twisting her chin in his hand.
What Sam was doing was not entirely unlike what happened to Dean every night. He glanced over at Dean, expecting to find discomfort with his use of enemy tactics.
Dean’s face was a blank journal page.
“Dean’s always been a sexist pig,” Sam informed her. “I assume that has something to do with what you did, but what’s relevant now is that it means that I’m going to be the one who deals with you. And I think you’ll find that, where I’m concerned, chivalry is dead.”
Lacey shook her head, more in general denial than in response to anything Sam had said. “I never—I follow the Path, I wish no harm on any man, I—”
He thought about it, and her head thunked back against the wall. “What did you do?”
She was almost crying now, her voice thick with terror. “I didn’t!”
His voice was a bored monotone. “I did the spell, I asked it who, and it led me here.”
Lacey’s hair whipped around her shoulders as she continued her denials. Sam catalogued the contents of the room. If she didn’t come up with a different story soon, he was going to have to get creative. There was a fireplace, he saw, and a poker that looked like it had seen a hundred years of regular use.
“Wait!” Dean sounded almost scared, though why that would be was a mystery to Sam; he had the witch under control.
Sam turned to Dean, who had his hands raised as if he were reassuring a nervous child. “Before, you said why. Why, Sam, not who.”
He considered that for a moment. It was a good point.
“Who?” he asked.
The light bounced away from its place over Lacey’s forehead and zoomed up the stairs of her house.
He pursued. Behind him, he heard Lacey fall to the floor, and the soft noise of Dean helping her to her feet.
The light was waiting for him at the top of the stairs, bouncing a little like a malicious Tinkerbell. He followed it down the narrow hall, covered with reproductions of the Old Masters in curliqued frames, to the farthest door on the left. It seemed anticlimactic, nearing the end of all this, to reach for the doorknob, but kicking the door in might give a bit too much warning of his intent.
The door swung open on a bedroom. The bed had a rough blue blanket thrown over the sheets; there was an antique dresser and a mirror over it in a wooden frame covered with old, peeling gold paint. A man sat in a yellow chair by the window, right where he could look down at the street below and spy on all the neighbors.
Sam recognized him: Lacey’s father, the one who’d scowled at Sam and Dean and the Impala like each one of them was a piece of trash that needed removal. The light zoomed to him, circled him a few times, then disappeared with a soft pop. The man turned his head, no trace of surprise on his face, and regarded Sam with the same contempt as he’d shown before. Sam wondered why, but he knew there was no answer that made sense.
Behind him, he heard the others. Feet scraped over the hardwood floors as Lacey lunged forward. Sam turned in time to see Dean grab her firmly, immobilizing her arms. “I don’t want to hurt you,” Dean told her. “Make a move on Sam—” he tilted his chin at her and smiled charmingly—“that’ll change.”
Lacey’s father wheezed with laughter. “Look at him! Still slutting around. D’you still want her, boy? Doesn’t matter, though, if she wants you.”
“What are you talking about, Dad?” she asked, her tone moving from fear to exasperation. She really had no idea. Lucky girl.
“It’s a curse,” the man explained. “Every time he raises an unclean lust, it’s visited upon him.”
Sam understood, in a general and distant way, that this was important information. But he was getting so hot, physically hot, and he really needed to know: “How do we lift the curse?”
The old man snorted. “He has to do it with someone who loves him. True love. Good luck with that, eh?”
Sam had a perfect view of Dean’s reflection in the mirror. The image was just a little odd, the small asymmetries of his face reversed. Dean’s expression was not blank enough to conceal the collapse of his hope. The world went white for a second while fury crackled through Sam like lightning. He hated everything in his life up to this point, and most of all he hated that this foul old man had accidentally hit on Dean’s craziest, deepest fear.
There was a funny smell. Burnt hair, Sam realized; the small hairs on the warlock’s forearms, his eyebrows, were curling and blackening, crazing up as if he’d gotten too close to a flame. The man was cringing into his beaten-up, overstuffed seat, too old to run and too mean to beg.
Sam stepped closer, studying him, the way the liver spots swam through the rough seas of his skin, how his scalp showed through his thinning white hair. “No matter what I do to you, you won’t live long,” he said, thinking it through.
He bent down, down, and rested one hand on each side of the warlock’s armchair, bracing himself carefully so that he could just brush a kiss against the man’s left temple.
Then he stood and stepped back. The sign he’d left fluttered under the thin skin like a black butterfly, then melted away.
“What did you do?” Lacey asked, her voice high with misery and terror.
“Just—left my mark on him,” Sam told her.
“I don’t—I don’t recognize it,” she said.
He grinned. “Don’t worry,” he said, knowing that his smile was a death’s head. “He’ll be meeting those who do soon enough.”
“I just wanted to teach him a lesson,” the old man whined.
“And look how much we’ve all learned,” Sam said softly. He returned to Lacey, dismissing her father from his attention. She was standing next to Dean, her shoulders slumped and her face red, possibly with shame. For her sake, he hoped it was shame. “Now, as I recall, you taught Dean a lesson the first time we met, so I’m thinking the impulse might run in the family. Before you decide to try something else, you remember the Threefold Law—and think of me as the sheriff.”
Dean was watching him with open concern. Sam knew that they had to get out of this house, or something terrible was going to happen.
“Come on, Sam,” Dean said, as if he’d heard Sam’s thoughts, and hurried across the floor, staying as far away from the warlock as possible, to pull Sam out of the room. Then they went down the stairs and out to the car, Dean never letting go of Sam’s arm.
Dean had started the car, driving who knows where, when the implications really hit Sam. ‘Every time he raises an unclean lust.’ That meant that Dean’s assailants weren’t full spirits, which was why the salt lines had been no barrier. They’d been called up by the curse on Dean, who was already inside every protection they had. The things that attacked him were representations of people he’d seen during the day. And that meant that Sam—
Dean’s hands were clenched around the steering wheel like it was a cliff edge and he was about to fall.
There had been a couple of days when Dean had hardly seen anyone but Sam, spent digging in churchyards or hiking through deep woods. And there had never been a night without an attack, not since the curse began.
And it got worse: According to the warlock, if Sam had given in to his sick desires, if he’d fallen that one last rung into depravity, that would have stopped it. Sam felt a heaviness in his hands, a pain that ran into his chest, like a dozen iron morningstars had been embedded in him. It was what he remembered from grieving for Jess: the cessation of a universe, the grinding to a halt of the whole world.
****
As soon as they’d checked into the motel and brought the bags in, Dean went for the one that was full of breakables and pulled out a fifth of scotch. He popped the cap and took two deep slugs, one after the other.
Sam wanted to join him, but thought it would be a bad idea for a variety of reasons. Instead, he checked and found the K-Y in the side pocket of Dean’s duffel. Good; that would be one less problem to deal with. He tossed it onto the nearest nightstand, right next to the alarm clock.
“Get on the bed,” Sam said. He began to unbutton his overshirt.
“Fuck no,” Dean said, putting the bottle down and stepping back towards the door. Sam focused on the emergency exit diagram over Dean’s shoulder, imagining the lock freezing, holding itself in place.
“Someone who loves you, Dean,” Sam said, weary, letting his hands still on the last button.
Hesitation, and something darker, flickered on Dean’s face. “You really think being brothers is gonna cut it?” Worse than the uncertainty on his face was the faint scrim of hope, barely there, devastating in its very weakness.
Sam wanted to touch Dean, hold him close, promise him safety and forever. But he’d need a blowtorch to get through to Dean that way, even if Dean would hold still for it, even if Sam deserved to be allowed to do it. So instead he shook his head. “No, I don’t.”
Dean was a wax figure.
“You don’t—” he said at last. And then Sam could see the implications hit him. His shoulders pulled in and he huffed out a breath like he’d taken a fastball to the chest. He looked at Sam like he’d looked at their possessed father in that cabin, when the bedrock certainties of his life had crumbled into air. For the first time in his life, Sam felt like a criminal.
Sam forced his hands to start moving again, getting the last buttons open. “Even you’d take a while to get someone else to fall for you, especially now. It has to be me.”
Dean sneered. “Yeah, what a big sacrifice for you.” He looked a little surprised that he’d said it.
And Sam deserved his scorn. “I know there’s no getting back from this. I know that. But this is the one thing I can do for you.” He shrugged the shirt off his shoulders and began tugging at his T-shirt.
“If I say no, you gonna force me?” Dean sounded honestly curious.
Sam raised his head. “Not now. But tonight?”
Dean turned away. “That’s not—it’s not you.” He took the two steps required to bring himself up against the wall, spreading his hands out and leaning into it so that his forehead touched cream-colored paint.
“Some of the time, it’s me,” Sam corrected. “Maybe after a couple of years of meditation I could stop. But as far as we know, I don’t even have to be around you to do it.” He toed off his boots, then unbuckled his belt. “All I have to do is want you.”
He could tell himself that he wouldn’t have developed this fixation if it hadn’t been for the curse, forcing him to get so close to Dean. It might even be true.
Dean pounded his head slowly into the wall a couple of times. He wouldn’t look over at Sam.
“If I’d known,” he said at last. “Maybe it wouldn’t—” But then he stopped, as if he’d decided that neither of them needed to hear that.
Sam already knew, anyway, just how much blame he bore. The warlock was going to burn for his part; what, Sam wondered, was a fitting disposition for him?
“I’d knock you out if I were sure it’d work that way,” he told Dean. “But breaking the curse might need both of us.” He pushed down his jeans and shorts and stepped out of them, naked except for his socks. Then, for lack of anything better to do, he sat down on the bed and took off the socks, crumpling them and stuffing them into his boots. Dean still had his forearms against the wall, his fists clenched, eyes fixed ahead like he was hoping to discover a secret message waiting for him there.
At last Dean shrugged and made a sound that was half a laugh and half a sob. He turned to Sam and did a brief double-take at Sam’s nudity, then flushed under his tan and fumbled with his shirt, hurrying to catch up.
Dean had to fight with his gray T-shirt to get it off, his amulet riding up and catching on his chin. He took a deep breath when he got to his jeans, letting it out slowly as he popped the buttons on his fly.
As always, Sam was struck by the elegance of Dean’s body, each curve of muscle and jut of bone perfectly arranged. Light gilded his skin; shadow defined the dips and hollows, the contours of his abs and the powerful lines of his quads.
Dean approached the bed with the same wariness he used when approaching grieving parents. Sam, still sitting on the edge, turned his head uncomfortably as Dean crawled to the center and waited there, on hands and knees, his head dropping down below the level of his back, the wings of his shoulderblades raised as if in anticipation of a blow.
“Well?” Dean asked.
“Not like that,” Sam said. No, the truth was: he begged. He swung his legs up and rolled so that he could put a hand on Dean’s shoulder. “I need—”
Dean turned his head. His brows were lowered in fury.
Sam couldn’t finish that sentence, but the facts remained as they were. “I don’t think I can,” he said.
“Great,” Dean snapped, and dropped down, rolling his body towards Sam’s and reaching for Sam’s cock. Sam grabbed his hand just before Dean’s fingers closed on him, almost afraid that Dean was going to castrate him half-accidentally. He pushed Dean’s hand back, putting them palm to palm, lacing their fingers together when Dean didn’t resist, until their hands were pressed against Dean’s chest, over his heart, and Sam could feel the heat of him on his fingertips.
“Let me,” Sam said, and stretched himself to brush his lips across Dean’s.
Just a press of skin on skin, no strength behind it. He could taste the liquor on Dean’s breath. From this distance, Dean’s eyelashes were still unbelievable, long and thick and completely concealing.
He gulped air and bent in again, this time running the tip of his tongue across Dean’s lower lip. Dean breathed out, not quite a sigh, and Sam did it again, finishing with a gentle downwards stroke right at the center.
Their fingers were still loosely clasped, pressed between their bodies, but Dean’s other hand came up to hold Sam’s shoulder. His grip was shockingly strong; Sam couldn’t have freed himself without damage.
Eventually he untangled his hand from Dean’s and broke the kiss, then had to lean his forehead against Dean’s for a second, just dealing with the carbonated lightness of his blood, the way the bed felt as if it had been spinning like a carousel under them.
He put a hand on Dean’s hip where the smooth skin was roughened by three scar lines, warm over bone and the beginning curve of muscle. He rolled them over, putting Dean on his back under Sam. Then he bent his head and started kissing his way down Dean’s chest. At last he felt Dean’s cock twitch and start to rise against his chest.
He was selfish and horrible and everything his demon patron ever could have hoped, because he was storing up every silken touch, every scar and freckle his fingers discovered, the dimples where Dean’s ass joined his back and the heavy curves where his cheeks met his thighs.
Dean’s legs spread when he coaxed them apart. He buried his face in Dean’s groin, feeling the head of Dean’s cock bump against his cheek. He kissed the soft place right under Dean’s belly button, the only place other than under his chin that Dean carried extra padding.
He desperately wished that he’d taken that ass Billy Palmer up on his offer sophomore year, because if he had any idea what he was doing he would have made Dean fuck him. But the disaster potential was already too high, and anyway they didn’t know whether the curse required the same acts Dean had already been subjected to.
Sam wrapped his hands around Dean’s thighs and sucked the tip of Dean’s cock into his mouth. Dean made a soft ‘unh’ sound, and Sam nearly wept with the knowledge that Dean was going to do this, was going to get off for him. His own cock throbbed, filling and rising against the bedcovers.
Dean was thick and the spit-slick flesh rubbed past his lips, forcing his mouth wider as he went further down. Sam spread his hands and slid them up towards the juncture of Dean’s thighs, feeling the hairs soft and springy under his palms, until his fingers were spread out over Dean’s femoral triangles and his thumbs rested on the soft curve of Dean’s inner thighs, brushing against the velvet of his balls.
Sam breathed him in, leather and bitters, and pumped his tongue against the underside of Dean’s cock. Above him, Dean was alternately cursing and grunting, muffled as if he’d stuck his wrist in his mouth.
Dean’s hips snapped up, and Sam surged with him, taking him just a fraction deeper. Dean cried out and his cock began to pulse; Sam could feel the come squeezing its way through the length in his mouth, fast and staticky.
Mouth dripping spit and come, he pulled off and raised his eyes. Dean had his head twisted into the pillow, the back of his hand covering his eyes as if he were trying to shade them from the sun.
Sam slowly crawled back up the bed, staying far enough above Dean that his cock wouldn’t drag against Dean’s skin, because he wasn’t sure he could stand the touch. He hesitated, wondering if he should ask Dean to say yes or if that would only make it worse.
Worse, he decided; he’d already made Dean more complicit in this nightmare than he should have. Bracing himself on one arm, he took the lube off of the nightstand and flicked the cap open with his thumb.
Dean blinked slowly, his eyes following Sam’s hand. “Lemme,” he slurred. Sam had a moment of terror when he thought he was going to shoot all over Dean before they’d even started, but he managed to pass off the lube and used his freed hand to press hard at the base of his cock, staving off the impulse to come.
He sat back on his heels, between Dean’s spread thighs, while Dean coated two fingers and drew his left leg a little further up so that he could just—
Sam dry-swallowed as Dean’s gun-callused fingers pumped in and out of himself. Dean’s dick twitched, half-hard again. At last Dean withdrew his hand. He turned his head to nod at the lube lying on the pillow next to him. “Your turn.”
Barely breathing, Sam managed to squeeze out a palmful of K-Y. He bit deep into his lip and coated himself as quickly as humanly possible.
Dean’s eyes were closed when Sam breached him. He tried to go slow, tried to watch Dean’s face, but after a few inches it was just unbearable, and he closed his own eyes and clenched his teeth and pushed, pushed until he was in as far as he could go, Dean folded up underneath him, his balls snug and soft against Sam’s belly.
Dean’s indrawn breath was not quite a whimper. Their chests were pressed together so that it felt like they were breathing in tandem, Dean in and Sam out. Dean’s legs were pushed so far up and out that the strain must have been severe, but Dean wasn’t fighting and Sam couldn’t make himself give Dean any room. Dean was sauna-hot around him, slick and tight as if he’d been made for this.
I'm doing this because I love you, Sam thought. It was the worst thing he'd ever wanted to say.
Beneath him, Dean groaned and turned his head to the side, exposing the tendons of his neck. The sheen of sweat coating his skin was too much; Dean never looked so wrung-out or worked-up when he'd finished with the curse-spirits. Sam bent his head and licked down the hollow of Dean's throat. Salt and ashes.
Dean brought his hands up then, settling them in Sam's hair. His fingers threaded gently through the messy, sweat-sticky strands, rubbing against Sam’s scalp.
“C’mon,” Dean rumbled. “Do it, give it to me, do it.”
And Sam did. There was a whining noise. He realized it was coming from his mouth, but he didn’t care, couldn’t care, had to get closer. Dean’s outspread thighs slammed against Sam’s hipbones with every thrust. Sweat dripped down Sam’s chest and caught on Dean’s. It was like there was a bomb timer winding down inside him; each time he pistoned down he felt another tick.
His mouth was spewing words, random phrases of filth and love. His hands pinned Dean’s shoulders to the bed.
The explosion, when it came, knocked him into outer space.
He had no idea how long it took for him to realize that Dean was still trapped under him. Swallowing back his fear, he braced his hands on the mattress and pushed himself up. Their skin separated with a wet, uncomfortable pull.
He opened his eyes and saw that Dean’s face was wet. He honestly had no idea whose tears had done that.
Carefully, he pulled back and out of Dean, unable to keep back an indrawn breath at the overwhelming sensation. Dean winced, then grimaced more deeply as he brought his overstressed legs back down to the bed.
Sam wanted to kiss him again, just on the forehead, just to reassure. But that was probably a bad idea.
Instead, he went into the bathroom and showered. It wasn’t symbolic. You didn’t get clean after something like this. It still needed doing.
When he came back out, wrapped in a towel because he hadn’t remembered to take a change of clothes in with him, Dean was sitting uncomfortably on the edge of the bed, still naked. He didn’t speak to Sam as he took his place in the bathroom.
Sam got dressed and packed his things. It didn’t take long.
When Dean came out, he hadn’t bothered with a towel, as if he’d decided that it didn’t matter any more. Sam waited as Dean pulled his boxers and jeans back on. Then, shoeless and shirtless, Dean did a circuit of the room. He got a gray-green henley out of his bag and pulled it over his head, tugging at the sleeves to get it to fit right. “You leaving?” he asked, not sounding very curious.
“I’ll wait until tonight,” Sam told him.
“If it doesn’t—” Dean began.
“It’ll work,” Sam said, his voice a black cloud. It wasn’t even that it was Sam that was giving Dean the problem, he knew. It was ‘true love.’ Just thinking about it made Sam want to beat Dean up, along with the warlock and his father and, hey, himself, just for starters.
****
It worked.
Sam left at one in the morning, and Dean didn’t tell him to stay.
****
Sam was cautious, sticking to research or simple one-man jobs, routine salt-and-burns that could be accomplished midday. Anything more complicated that wasn’t urgent he passed on to Bobby and got out of town.
A couple of times there was no time to find another hunter and he went in hot, using the power that surged through him like an ocean current. Ava had made their abilities sound dirty, but the truth was that using them properly felt good the same way that a hard workout did, or a well-written paper. Developing fine control was an accomplishment, and gave him more options than just slamming someone or something up against a wall.
He probably could have done without using the telekinesis, since there was nothing he hunted that he hadn’t killed before, but he had a duty to be careful. Sam knew that the worst thing he could do, worse than everything he’d already done, would be to get killed out on a hunt on his own. He hoped, he prayed, that Dean knew that the same went for him, and that Dean still cared enough for that to matter.
He jerked off sometimes, safe in the knowledge that it was pure fantasy, that Dean wouldn’t be paying for it the next night. Repeating that to himself, he almost didn’t feel guilty.
He often thought about the warlock’s words. True love. That couldn’t be all wrong. Sick; twisted like a strangler vine; even horrifying. But not all wrong.
Months passed.
Sam was in Indiana, sitting in the junker he’d bought and scoping out a potentially haunted house, when his alternate phone rang. He didn’t recognize the number.
“Hello?”
“Hey.” Dean’s voice was as tentative as his own. He heard Dean clear his throat. “So, there’s this hunt—oh, fuckit, Sam. Come home.”
The world blurred. “Where are you?”
“Impact, Texas,” Dean said, and even in his stunned condition Sam could tell that Dean was dying to make fun of the name.
“Twelve hours,” Sam said, and started the car.
Of course, after Dean hung up, he had to turn the engine off for a moment, just so he could drape his arms over the steering wheel and cry, just to get it out of his system. But he made it in eleven anyway. The one patrol car that turned on its lights and started after him found an urgent errand elsewhere.
****
The night was warm and clear when he arrived at Dean’s motel. The Impala was parked at the far end of the parking lot, right in front of the last room on the row, no other cars around her.
Dean was sitting on her hood, drinking a beer from a six-pack sitting on the ground by him. He gestured, and Sam picked one of the remaining bottles just to have something to do with his hands. He leaned against the passenger side, crossing his arms over his chest so that he wouldn’t do anything stupid. The metal was warm from the earlier heat, but not uncomfortable.
He heard the clink of Dean’s ring against the glass bottle.
“So you have to shut up until I’m done, ‘cause I spent a lot of time on this,” Dean said at last.
Sam nodded quickly, not daring to turn his head.
“I’m not like you. Things don’t mean the same to you as to me. Some things anyway. You didn’t break me. I’m messed up some, but that’s not on you. You mighta been part of the curse, but you were the whole cure.
“There’s only two things I care about in this world, and that’s hunting evil and you, Sam. I can see a day coming when gettin’ laid goes back on that list, but it always comes last anyway. Well, always since I was sixteen,” Dean added with tactless frankness, and Sam couldn’t suppress a snigger.
“Point is,” Dean continued deliberately, “I needed to get my head together. But I shoulda told you right off that it was only for a while. At least, if you still want to do this.”
Sam wished that Dean had bothered to define ‘this.’ But it didn’t matter, did it? “I do,” he said.
He heard Dean take a swallow of his drink. “Good,” he said. “That’s good.”
And then Dean jumped off the car, his boots crunching in the gravel of the parking lot. Sam kept his eyes closed, but every nerve felt Dean’s approach. He was inches away, he was hovering, he was—
Plucking the unopened beer bottle out of Sam’s hand. Sam’s eyes popped open. “You gonna drink this or just romance it?” Dean asked, his eyes bright.
Sam gaped at him, then recovered and snatched it back. “No takebacks,” he said.
“Big talk for a guy who doesn’t have an opener,” Dean pointed out.
At which point Sam was morally obligated to take a careful look at the cap, concentrate—
The neck of the bottle exploded, glass cubes and beer foam spewing everywhere. Sam dropped what was left of the bottle, wiped his own eyes clean and then grabbed frantically at Dean. Dean’s hands got in the way of Sam’s; Dean’s “shit shit shit” mingled with Sam’s “sorry, sorry—you all right?”
Finally, Dean managed to push Sam back against the car. Dean’s shirt was soaked, but his face was undamaged.
“Uh,” Sam said. “I was nervous?”
Dean grinned, the triumphant grin of a guy who was going to bring this up again and again and again. “Guess you’re making the next beer run,” he said.
“I guess I am,” Sam said. The lightness that filled him was better than any drink.
Dean frowned for a second, then flipped over to a slight smile. “Good to know you haven’t gone all Darth Vader. If a beer can still outsmart you, I’m pretty sure you’re not any kind of threat to the world.”
Sam didn’t much want to talk about that, not right now. Instead he smiled at Dean, stupid with relief, and Dean grinned back.
“There is a hunt, you know,” he said, as if they’d been stopped in the middle of another conversation.
“Of course there is,” Sam agreed. “But right now—” He just wanted to look at Dean, fill his eyes and his consciousness up with Dean’s presence. Sam would have sworn he’d remembered the exact shade of Dean’s eyes, the precise length of his lashes, every faint freckle layered over his skin, but every inch of him seemed new and wonderful in the bad light spilling from the motel.
“Hey,” Dean said softly, as if he were coaxing a stranger out of harm’s way. They were still only inches apart.
Sam’s entire body felt like it might go the same way as the beer bottle. He looked at Dean’s mouth, imagined the feel of Dean’s stubble against his tongue. He coughed and shifted, trying to ease his sudden discomfort. “About that third item on the list,” he said.
Dean shrugged and looked away sheepishly.
“You need to know that I still feel the same way,” Sam said. “I won’t—you don’t have to worry about me, but—that’s just how I feel. I’m not going to tell you I won’t be jealous, but I’ll live.”
Dean smiled at him again, this time with a little sadness mixed in with the sweet. “You won’t need to be jealous,” he said, and the certainty in his voice nearly brought Sam to his knees. “It’s like that chick-flick with the pirates says: True love doesn’t happen every day.”
Like that, they were hugging, Sam bending so that he could put his head on Dean’s shoulder. Dean’s arms around him meant security, just like always. Sam tried to make the same promise with his own grasp. He was fucked up in ten or twenty different ways, so fucked up that ‘freaky demon powers’ didn’t even top the list.
Maybe that was what made him perfect for Dean: Hell, it had taken black magic to convince Dean that Sam actually loved him. Dean was a miracle, but most people didn’t know what to do with miracles when they arrived. Sam wasn’t going to make that mistake. He’d spent enough time being sorry, and here Dean was, choosing him.
Anyone who got in the way of happily ever after—well, Sam was strong and creative, and he’d been pushed around by other agendas enough for twelve lifetimes. With Dean at his side, there was just no limit to what he might do.
END
They still needed to go to bars when they wanted to make a semi-legal buck. Sam might have had a few more shots on average now that he was spending so much quality time with toilets. Dean could neither afford that, as spirits apparently took badly to whiskey dick, nor could he admit to Sam that he wanted some temporary oblivion. But even that wasn’t much of a change; Dean didn’t generally drink to get drunk, not when he was around Sam.
He didn’t even do anything to discourage the girls, the ones who accumulated around him like crumpled-up bar napkins. He didn’t seek them out, but he never had. He bought them drinks once they’d approached him and smiled at them without showing his teeth, same as ever. Just, at the end of the night (always before midnight now, and that meant endless jokes about turning into a pumpkin, each girl always smiling as if she were the first one to have thought of it) he’d go home with Sam instead.
Sam didn’t get why Dean pretended that any of them had a chance with him, and Dean didn’t do much to explain. Keeping in practice, he said. Sam thought maybe it was Dean’s way of saying to himself that nothing had really changed. That if he didn’t take one of those girls out to the back and have her up against the wall, it was only because he didn’t want to. Or maybe vice versa, to the extent Sam understood Dean’s bizarre philosophy of the material world.
****
For reasons both good and bad, Bobby wasn’t going to help him use his gifts to help Dean, so Sam made do in other ways. Dean and Bobby liked to pretend otherwise, but Sam remembered plenty from the old days; Meg hadn’t killed every contact Sam knew. In fact, the ones she’d let live tended to be just the ones Sam needed to talk to for his current endeavors.
Possibly that ought to have bothered him.
The good news was that restoring his powers turned out to be a lot like fixing the plumbing in an abandoned building. The structure was there, but the pipes were gummed. Some of them were broken, others just needed a good hard whack.
But the power didn’t have anything to hold on to, not directly. So the next step was to trace the problem to its source.
One of the sorcerer’s books was a variant of Liber Juratus with an expanded, hand-annotated section on using demon powers to perform mortal tasks. The ink was brown and faded, and when Sam ran his fingers over the pages, they felt almost sticky. He thought he’d probably get rid of the book when this was over.
Sam hadn’t said much to Dean about his plans, but at this point Dean’s assistance might be required, or maybe Dean would get some satisfaction out of helping. When he was ready, he waited to explain until they’d just absorbed a big lunch and Dean was pretending to clean his knives but really just dozing in front of the television.
“That’s blood magic,” Dean said before he finished, in the tone that said ‘no way’ and meant it. He sat up straight and began sliding the knives back into their sheaths and cases.
Sam had been prepared for that objection. “Not death magic. Blood’s not inherently good or bad. It’s just power.”
“Yeah,” Dean said, still meaning ‘no way.’ “Who you planning to cut?”
“My blood’ll work fine.”
Dean tested the edge of an athame against his nail. “Dude, you sure as hell ain’t the pretty one, so when did you get stupid?”
Controlling a spell of that magnitude was hard enough at full capacity. Woozy with blood loss was a handicap that few witches (or warlocks, if you wanted to say that was what Sam was proposing to become) would risk.
“I’m certain that it will get us the answers we need, Dean.” He put his absolute faith into his voice, and Dean finally lifted his head. The past months had carved the faint lines around Dean’s eyes and his mouth into permanent additions. If anything, Dean looked better like this, the smile lines and crow’s feet working with the stubble to roughen the prettiness of his face into something utterly gorgeous, unmistakably a man rather than a boy.
Sam glanced away, embarrassed, just as Dean spoke. “If you’re so certain, if it means that much, then we’ll use my blood.”
“Fine,” Sam said. Dean looked surprised that Sam hadn’t put up more of a fight. But Sam wouldn’t need much more than a pint, and Dean could do that while running and shooting, as Sam knew for a fact.
****
They sat cross-legged facing one another, the large ritual basin in between them. It was lacquered red on the outside and black on the inside. Sam was aware there was a theory behind the colors, but he didn’t really care. From above, Sam realized, they formed the shape of a winking eye, two carets bracketing a circle. He wondered what housekeeping would think when they came in to clean up the mess. The only rituals usually performed in an anonymous Days Inn room like this had very little to do with witchcraft.
“Give me your left arm,” Sam ordered. The bandages were waiting, piled up to one side, along with a pint of orange juice and a plastic tub of the Trader Joe’s three-ginger cookies that Dean pretended not to like.
Dean stuck his arm out with an aggrieved sigh. “You know, with that makeup on, you look like a clown. Think you’ll scare yourself out of your pants?”
Sam ignored him. The blue, red and black face paint was admittedly odd-looking, but no matter the hue of the magic you were calling up, witchcraft was about respect. The ritual had face paint in it; ergo, Sam was using face paint. He had raw power to burn, but his only hope of channeling it into a divination was to follow instructions.
Carefully, he smoothed the salve over the flesh of Dean’s inner arm, ignoring Dean’s quite justified protests about how bad it smelled. He said the words of blessing over the knife, and thanked Dean for his willing sacrifice. He did it in Latin, just so Dean wouldn’t add that to his bitch list. Then he sliced across Dean’s forearm, just below the crook of his elbow. He turned Dean’s arm so that the blood spilled down over his skin, a shining red cuff, and into the bowl.
The things already in the bowl were as shriveled as raisins, but when the blood covered them it was as if he’d poured water on sodium. The explosion blanked Sam’s vision, and the smoke took a few seconds to dissipate after that. Dean swore while Sam coughed, the days-dead taste unbelievably foul on his tongue. When he managed to wipe the irritated tears from his eyes, he saw that the bowl had cracked into three perfectly regular pieces. They reminded him of a biohazard sign, lying there on the floor.
He remembered himself and grabbed Dean’s arm, using butterfly bandages to hold the wound closed and then covering it with gauze, wrapping it carefully as he cleaned off the still-sticky blood. Dean didn’t protest, watching Sam as if he might explode like one of the spell pellets.
“Did it work?” Dean asked when Sam let him go.
“Let’s see,” Sam said. “Drink that,” he ordered absently, shoving the orange juice at Dean. Then he got up and unfolded the map of the United States onto the nearest bed.
“Why?” he asked.
After a second, a pinprick of white light appeared in the air above his head, growing slowly until it was the size of a bumblebee and darkening in color until it was a sick, mushroomy yellow. Then it floated delicately over the map, swinging in circles, tighter and tighter until it settled just over a spot in the East.
Sam double-checked so as not to make any mistake. Alewife, Massachusetts.
“Lacey,” he said, considering, then started to refold the map. Dean was inspecting him like he was a car crash and Dean was stuck in the gaper delay. But Dean was also stuffing cookies into his mouth, so Sam wasn’t going to complain. He started to pack, shoving clothes randomly into his duffel.
They were in the middle of Pennsylvania, and they had a long drive ahead of them.
****
The guidelight returned when they hit 95, hovering at the upper edge of Sam’s vision. It took them unerringly towards the town, then through streets that seemed familiar (but then, some days they all seemed familiar), and finally to a large Victorian painted cake-yellow.
Their timing was good. It would have been awkward to march into her place of work and—and get her to fix whatever she’d done.
Dean shut off the engine, but he didn’t leave the car as Sam got out and slammed the door, not quite hard enough to draw a rebuke from Dean. Sam walked around to the driver’s side. Dean was just sitting there, his hand still on the ignition. “You don’t have to come in if you don’t want to,” he told Dean, keeping his voice absolutely neutral.
Dean shook himself, almost invisibly, and swung the door open so that Sam had to step back. Sam waited as Dean checked his weapons, and then they started up the flagstone walkway. The front garden was full of purple flowers and delicate frog-green fronds. Sam recognized a lot of the plants, and assumed that the others also had witchery purposes.
Their feet made hollow sounds on the old wooden stairs. Sam pressed the doorbell, and they waited.
Lacey answered, her face already lighting with pleasure as she opened the door. She was still in her business clothes, a bright green skirt suit with a mint shell underneath, and her hair was pulled back in a twist. Nothing about her screamed ‘evil, life-destroying witch.’ “You should have called!” she said. The guidelight flared more brightly in her presence. She noticed it, and her expression became uncertain. “What’s that?”
“May we come in?” Sam said, and pushed past her. Dean, his lips compressed and his jaw tight, followed. Lacey turned, her face showing nothing but confusion. Sam allowed her to close the door behind them.
“Dean,” Lacey appealed, “what’s going on? Did you figure out what was wrong?”
Dean’s mouth twitched. “We were hoping you’d explain that.”
She rocked back a step. “I don’t know—”
Sam had been sitting in the car for over five hours, thinking about how this would go. He was not in the mood for denial.
Azazel’s aims had been rotten all the way through, but he’d had a firm grasp of the theatrical fundamentals. Sam nodded. Lacey’s body slammed back against her blue-and-white striped wallpaper, rattling the family portraits to either side of her. He kept her pinned for a second, then let her slide down to her feet.
She wobbled and swept one hand up, her lips already forming some cantrip. Sam clenched his fist. Her mouth squeezed up like someone was twisting her chin in his hand.
What Sam was doing was not entirely unlike what happened to Dean every night. He glanced over at Dean, expecting to find discomfort with his use of enemy tactics.
Dean’s face was a blank journal page.
“Dean’s always been a sexist pig,” Sam informed her. “I assume that has something to do with what you did, but what’s relevant now is that it means that I’m going to be the one who deals with you. And I think you’ll find that, where I’m concerned, chivalry is dead.”
Lacey shook her head, more in general denial than in response to anything Sam had said. “I never—I follow the Path, I wish no harm on any man, I—”
He thought about it, and her head thunked back against the wall. “What did you do?”
She was almost crying now, her voice thick with terror. “I didn’t!”
His voice was a bored monotone. “I did the spell, I asked it who, and it led me here.”
Lacey’s hair whipped around her shoulders as she continued her denials. Sam catalogued the contents of the room. If she didn’t come up with a different story soon, he was going to have to get creative. There was a fireplace, he saw, and a poker that looked like it had seen a hundred years of regular use.
“Wait!” Dean sounded almost scared, though why that would be was a mystery to Sam; he had the witch under control.
Sam turned to Dean, who had his hands raised as if he were reassuring a nervous child. “Before, you said why. Why, Sam, not who.”
He considered that for a moment. It was a good point.
“Who?” he asked.
The light bounced away from its place over Lacey’s forehead and zoomed up the stairs of her house.
He pursued. Behind him, he heard Lacey fall to the floor, and the soft noise of Dean helping her to her feet.
The light was waiting for him at the top of the stairs, bouncing a little like a malicious Tinkerbell. He followed it down the narrow hall, covered with reproductions of the Old Masters in curliqued frames, to the farthest door on the left. It seemed anticlimactic, nearing the end of all this, to reach for the doorknob, but kicking the door in might give a bit too much warning of his intent.
The door swung open on a bedroom. The bed had a rough blue blanket thrown over the sheets; there was an antique dresser and a mirror over it in a wooden frame covered with old, peeling gold paint. A man sat in a yellow chair by the window, right where he could look down at the street below and spy on all the neighbors.
Sam recognized him: Lacey’s father, the one who’d scowled at Sam and Dean and the Impala like each one of them was a piece of trash that needed removal. The light zoomed to him, circled him a few times, then disappeared with a soft pop. The man turned his head, no trace of surprise on his face, and regarded Sam with the same contempt as he’d shown before. Sam wondered why, but he knew there was no answer that made sense.
Behind him, he heard the others. Feet scraped over the hardwood floors as Lacey lunged forward. Sam turned in time to see Dean grab her firmly, immobilizing her arms. “I don’t want to hurt you,” Dean told her. “Make a move on Sam—” he tilted his chin at her and smiled charmingly—“that’ll change.”
Lacey’s father wheezed with laughter. “Look at him! Still slutting around. D’you still want her, boy? Doesn’t matter, though, if she wants you.”
“What are you talking about, Dad?” she asked, her tone moving from fear to exasperation. She really had no idea. Lucky girl.
“It’s a curse,” the man explained. “Every time he raises an unclean lust, it’s visited upon him.”
Sam understood, in a general and distant way, that this was important information. But he was getting so hot, physically hot, and he really needed to know: “How do we lift the curse?”
The old man snorted. “He has to do it with someone who loves him. True love. Good luck with that, eh?”
Sam had a perfect view of Dean’s reflection in the mirror. The image was just a little odd, the small asymmetries of his face reversed. Dean’s expression was not blank enough to conceal the collapse of his hope. The world went white for a second while fury crackled through Sam like lightning. He hated everything in his life up to this point, and most of all he hated that this foul old man had accidentally hit on Dean’s craziest, deepest fear.
There was a funny smell. Burnt hair, Sam realized; the small hairs on the warlock’s forearms, his eyebrows, were curling and blackening, crazing up as if he’d gotten too close to a flame. The man was cringing into his beaten-up, overstuffed seat, too old to run and too mean to beg.
Sam stepped closer, studying him, the way the liver spots swam through the rough seas of his skin, how his scalp showed through his thinning white hair. “No matter what I do to you, you won’t live long,” he said, thinking it through.
He bent down, down, and rested one hand on each side of the warlock’s armchair, bracing himself carefully so that he could just brush a kiss against the man’s left temple.
Then he stood and stepped back. The sign he’d left fluttered under the thin skin like a black butterfly, then melted away.
“What did you do?” Lacey asked, her voice high with misery and terror.
“Just—left my mark on him,” Sam told her.
“I don’t—I don’t recognize it,” she said.
He grinned. “Don’t worry,” he said, knowing that his smile was a death’s head. “He’ll be meeting those who do soon enough.”
“I just wanted to teach him a lesson,” the old man whined.
“And look how much we’ve all learned,” Sam said softly. He returned to Lacey, dismissing her father from his attention. She was standing next to Dean, her shoulders slumped and her face red, possibly with shame. For her sake, he hoped it was shame. “Now, as I recall, you taught Dean a lesson the first time we met, so I’m thinking the impulse might run in the family. Before you decide to try something else, you remember the Threefold Law—and think of me as the sheriff.”
Dean was watching him with open concern. Sam knew that they had to get out of this house, or something terrible was going to happen.
“Come on, Sam,” Dean said, as if he’d heard Sam’s thoughts, and hurried across the floor, staying as far away from the warlock as possible, to pull Sam out of the room. Then they went down the stairs and out to the car, Dean never letting go of Sam’s arm.
Dean had started the car, driving who knows where, when the implications really hit Sam. ‘Every time he raises an unclean lust.’ That meant that Dean’s assailants weren’t full spirits, which was why the salt lines had been no barrier. They’d been called up by the curse on Dean, who was already inside every protection they had. The things that attacked him were representations of people he’d seen during the day. And that meant that Sam—
Dean’s hands were clenched around the steering wheel like it was a cliff edge and he was about to fall.
There had been a couple of days when Dean had hardly seen anyone but Sam, spent digging in churchyards or hiking through deep woods. And there had never been a night without an attack, not since the curse began.
And it got worse: According to the warlock, if Sam had given in to his sick desires, if he’d fallen that one last rung into depravity, that would have stopped it. Sam felt a heaviness in his hands, a pain that ran into his chest, like a dozen iron morningstars had been embedded in him. It was what he remembered from grieving for Jess: the cessation of a universe, the grinding to a halt of the whole world.
****
As soon as they’d checked into the motel and brought the bags in, Dean went for the one that was full of breakables and pulled out a fifth of scotch. He popped the cap and took two deep slugs, one after the other.
Sam wanted to join him, but thought it would be a bad idea for a variety of reasons. Instead, he checked and found the K-Y in the side pocket of Dean’s duffel. Good; that would be one less problem to deal with. He tossed it onto the nearest nightstand, right next to the alarm clock.
“Get on the bed,” Sam said. He began to unbutton his overshirt.
“Fuck no,” Dean said, putting the bottle down and stepping back towards the door. Sam focused on the emergency exit diagram over Dean’s shoulder, imagining the lock freezing, holding itself in place.
“Someone who loves you, Dean,” Sam said, weary, letting his hands still on the last button.
Hesitation, and something darker, flickered on Dean’s face. “You really think being brothers is gonna cut it?” Worse than the uncertainty on his face was the faint scrim of hope, barely there, devastating in its very weakness.
Sam wanted to touch Dean, hold him close, promise him safety and forever. But he’d need a blowtorch to get through to Dean that way, even if Dean would hold still for it, even if Sam deserved to be allowed to do it. So instead he shook his head. “No, I don’t.”
Dean was a wax figure.
“You don’t—” he said at last. And then Sam could see the implications hit him. His shoulders pulled in and he huffed out a breath like he’d taken a fastball to the chest. He looked at Sam like he’d looked at their possessed father in that cabin, when the bedrock certainties of his life had crumbled into air. For the first time in his life, Sam felt like a criminal.
Sam forced his hands to start moving again, getting the last buttons open. “Even you’d take a while to get someone else to fall for you, especially now. It has to be me.”
Dean sneered. “Yeah, what a big sacrifice for you.” He looked a little surprised that he’d said it.
And Sam deserved his scorn. “I know there’s no getting back from this. I know that. But this is the one thing I can do for you.” He shrugged the shirt off his shoulders and began tugging at his T-shirt.
“If I say no, you gonna force me?” Dean sounded honestly curious.
Sam raised his head. “Not now. But tonight?”
Dean turned away. “That’s not—it’s not you.” He took the two steps required to bring himself up against the wall, spreading his hands out and leaning into it so that his forehead touched cream-colored paint.
“Some of the time, it’s me,” Sam corrected. “Maybe after a couple of years of meditation I could stop. But as far as we know, I don’t even have to be around you to do it.” He toed off his boots, then unbuckled his belt. “All I have to do is want you.”
He could tell himself that he wouldn’t have developed this fixation if it hadn’t been for the curse, forcing him to get so close to Dean. It might even be true.
Dean pounded his head slowly into the wall a couple of times. He wouldn’t look over at Sam.
“If I’d known,” he said at last. “Maybe it wouldn’t—” But then he stopped, as if he’d decided that neither of them needed to hear that.
Sam already knew, anyway, just how much blame he bore. The warlock was going to burn for his part; what, Sam wondered, was a fitting disposition for him?
“I’d knock you out if I were sure it’d work that way,” he told Dean. “But breaking the curse might need both of us.” He pushed down his jeans and shorts and stepped out of them, naked except for his socks. Then, for lack of anything better to do, he sat down on the bed and took off the socks, crumpling them and stuffing them into his boots. Dean still had his forearms against the wall, his fists clenched, eyes fixed ahead like he was hoping to discover a secret message waiting for him there.
At last Dean shrugged and made a sound that was half a laugh and half a sob. He turned to Sam and did a brief double-take at Sam’s nudity, then flushed under his tan and fumbled with his shirt, hurrying to catch up.
Dean had to fight with his gray T-shirt to get it off, his amulet riding up and catching on his chin. He took a deep breath when he got to his jeans, letting it out slowly as he popped the buttons on his fly.
As always, Sam was struck by the elegance of Dean’s body, each curve of muscle and jut of bone perfectly arranged. Light gilded his skin; shadow defined the dips and hollows, the contours of his abs and the powerful lines of his quads.
Dean approached the bed with the same wariness he used when approaching grieving parents. Sam, still sitting on the edge, turned his head uncomfortably as Dean crawled to the center and waited there, on hands and knees, his head dropping down below the level of his back, the wings of his shoulderblades raised as if in anticipation of a blow.
“Well?” Dean asked.
“Not like that,” Sam said. No, the truth was: he begged. He swung his legs up and rolled so that he could put a hand on Dean’s shoulder. “I need—”
Dean turned his head. His brows were lowered in fury.
Sam couldn’t finish that sentence, but the facts remained as they were. “I don’t think I can,” he said.
“Great,” Dean snapped, and dropped down, rolling his body towards Sam’s and reaching for Sam’s cock. Sam grabbed his hand just before Dean’s fingers closed on him, almost afraid that Dean was going to castrate him half-accidentally. He pushed Dean’s hand back, putting them palm to palm, lacing their fingers together when Dean didn’t resist, until their hands were pressed against Dean’s chest, over his heart, and Sam could feel the heat of him on his fingertips.
“Let me,” Sam said, and stretched himself to brush his lips across Dean’s.
Just a press of skin on skin, no strength behind it. He could taste the liquor on Dean’s breath. From this distance, Dean’s eyelashes were still unbelievable, long and thick and completely concealing.
He gulped air and bent in again, this time running the tip of his tongue across Dean’s lower lip. Dean breathed out, not quite a sigh, and Sam did it again, finishing with a gentle downwards stroke right at the center.
Their fingers were still loosely clasped, pressed between their bodies, but Dean’s other hand came up to hold Sam’s shoulder. His grip was shockingly strong; Sam couldn’t have freed himself without damage.
Eventually he untangled his hand from Dean’s and broke the kiss, then had to lean his forehead against Dean’s for a second, just dealing with the carbonated lightness of his blood, the way the bed felt as if it had been spinning like a carousel under them.
He put a hand on Dean’s hip where the smooth skin was roughened by three scar lines, warm over bone and the beginning curve of muscle. He rolled them over, putting Dean on his back under Sam. Then he bent his head and started kissing his way down Dean’s chest. At last he felt Dean’s cock twitch and start to rise against his chest.
He was selfish and horrible and everything his demon patron ever could have hoped, because he was storing up every silken touch, every scar and freckle his fingers discovered, the dimples where Dean’s ass joined his back and the heavy curves where his cheeks met his thighs.
Dean’s legs spread when he coaxed them apart. He buried his face in Dean’s groin, feeling the head of Dean’s cock bump against his cheek. He kissed the soft place right under Dean’s belly button, the only place other than under his chin that Dean carried extra padding.
He desperately wished that he’d taken that ass Billy Palmer up on his offer sophomore year, because if he had any idea what he was doing he would have made Dean fuck him. But the disaster potential was already too high, and anyway they didn’t know whether the curse required the same acts Dean had already been subjected to.
Sam wrapped his hands around Dean’s thighs and sucked the tip of Dean’s cock into his mouth. Dean made a soft ‘unh’ sound, and Sam nearly wept with the knowledge that Dean was going to do this, was going to get off for him. His own cock throbbed, filling and rising against the bedcovers.
Dean was thick and the spit-slick flesh rubbed past his lips, forcing his mouth wider as he went further down. Sam spread his hands and slid them up towards the juncture of Dean’s thighs, feeling the hairs soft and springy under his palms, until his fingers were spread out over Dean’s femoral triangles and his thumbs rested on the soft curve of Dean’s inner thighs, brushing against the velvet of his balls.
Sam breathed him in, leather and bitters, and pumped his tongue against the underside of Dean’s cock. Above him, Dean was alternately cursing and grunting, muffled as if he’d stuck his wrist in his mouth.
Dean’s hips snapped up, and Sam surged with him, taking him just a fraction deeper. Dean cried out and his cock began to pulse; Sam could feel the come squeezing its way through the length in his mouth, fast and staticky.
Mouth dripping spit and come, he pulled off and raised his eyes. Dean had his head twisted into the pillow, the back of his hand covering his eyes as if he were trying to shade them from the sun.
Sam slowly crawled back up the bed, staying far enough above Dean that his cock wouldn’t drag against Dean’s skin, because he wasn’t sure he could stand the touch. He hesitated, wondering if he should ask Dean to say yes or if that would only make it worse.
Worse, he decided; he’d already made Dean more complicit in this nightmare than he should have. Bracing himself on one arm, he took the lube off of the nightstand and flicked the cap open with his thumb.
Dean blinked slowly, his eyes following Sam’s hand. “Lemme,” he slurred. Sam had a moment of terror when he thought he was going to shoot all over Dean before they’d even started, but he managed to pass off the lube and used his freed hand to press hard at the base of his cock, staving off the impulse to come.
He sat back on his heels, between Dean’s spread thighs, while Dean coated two fingers and drew his left leg a little further up so that he could just—
Sam dry-swallowed as Dean’s gun-callused fingers pumped in and out of himself. Dean’s dick twitched, half-hard again. At last Dean withdrew his hand. He turned his head to nod at the lube lying on the pillow next to him. “Your turn.”
Barely breathing, Sam managed to squeeze out a palmful of K-Y. He bit deep into his lip and coated himself as quickly as humanly possible.
Dean’s eyes were closed when Sam breached him. He tried to go slow, tried to watch Dean’s face, but after a few inches it was just unbearable, and he closed his own eyes and clenched his teeth and pushed, pushed until he was in as far as he could go, Dean folded up underneath him, his balls snug and soft against Sam’s belly.
Dean’s indrawn breath was not quite a whimper. Their chests were pressed together so that it felt like they were breathing in tandem, Dean in and Sam out. Dean’s legs were pushed so far up and out that the strain must have been severe, but Dean wasn’t fighting and Sam couldn’t make himself give Dean any room. Dean was sauna-hot around him, slick and tight as if he’d been made for this.
I'm doing this because I love you, Sam thought. It was the worst thing he'd ever wanted to say.
Beneath him, Dean groaned and turned his head to the side, exposing the tendons of his neck. The sheen of sweat coating his skin was too much; Dean never looked so wrung-out or worked-up when he'd finished with the curse-spirits. Sam bent his head and licked down the hollow of Dean's throat. Salt and ashes.
Dean brought his hands up then, settling them in Sam's hair. His fingers threaded gently through the messy, sweat-sticky strands, rubbing against Sam’s scalp.
“C’mon,” Dean rumbled. “Do it, give it to me, do it.”
And Sam did. There was a whining noise. He realized it was coming from his mouth, but he didn’t care, couldn’t care, had to get closer. Dean’s outspread thighs slammed against Sam’s hipbones with every thrust. Sweat dripped down Sam’s chest and caught on Dean’s. It was like there was a bomb timer winding down inside him; each time he pistoned down he felt another tick.
His mouth was spewing words, random phrases of filth and love. His hands pinned Dean’s shoulders to the bed.
The explosion, when it came, knocked him into outer space.
He had no idea how long it took for him to realize that Dean was still trapped under him. Swallowing back his fear, he braced his hands on the mattress and pushed himself up. Their skin separated with a wet, uncomfortable pull.
He opened his eyes and saw that Dean’s face was wet. He honestly had no idea whose tears had done that.
Carefully, he pulled back and out of Dean, unable to keep back an indrawn breath at the overwhelming sensation. Dean winced, then grimaced more deeply as he brought his overstressed legs back down to the bed.
Sam wanted to kiss him again, just on the forehead, just to reassure. But that was probably a bad idea.
Instead, he went into the bathroom and showered. It wasn’t symbolic. You didn’t get clean after something like this. It still needed doing.
When he came back out, wrapped in a towel because he hadn’t remembered to take a change of clothes in with him, Dean was sitting uncomfortably on the edge of the bed, still naked. He didn’t speak to Sam as he took his place in the bathroom.
Sam got dressed and packed his things. It didn’t take long.
When Dean came out, he hadn’t bothered with a towel, as if he’d decided that it didn’t matter any more. Sam waited as Dean pulled his boxers and jeans back on. Then, shoeless and shirtless, Dean did a circuit of the room. He got a gray-green henley out of his bag and pulled it over his head, tugging at the sleeves to get it to fit right. “You leaving?” he asked, not sounding very curious.
“I’ll wait until tonight,” Sam told him.
“If it doesn’t—” Dean began.
“It’ll work,” Sam said, his voice a black cloud. It wasn’t even that it was Sam that was giving Dean the problem, he knew. It was ‘true love.’ Just thinking about it made Sam want to beat Dean up, along with the warlock and his father and, hey, himself, just for starters.
****
It worked.
Sam left at one in the morning, and Dean didn’t tell him to stay.
****
Sam was cautious, sticking to research or simple one-man jobs, routine salt-and-burns that could be accomplished midday. Anything more complicated that wasn’t urgent he passed on to Bobby and got out of town.
A couple of times there was no time to find another hunter and he went in hot, using the power that surged through him like an ocean current. Ava had made their abilities sound dirty, but the truth was that using them properly felt good the same way that a hard workout did, or a well-written paper. Developing fine control was an accomplishment, and gave him more options than just slamming someone or something up against a wall.
He probably could have done without using the telekinesis, since there was nothing he hunted that he hadn’t killed before, but he had a duty to be careful. Sam knew that the worst thing he could do, worse than everything he’d already done, would be to get killed out on a hunt on his own. He hoped, he prayed, that Dean knew that the same went for him, and that Dean still cared enough for that to matter.
He jerked off sometimes, safe in the knowledge that it was pure fantasy, that Dean wouldn’t be paying for it the next night. Repeating that to himself, he almost didn’t feel guilty.
He often thought about the warlock’s words. True love. That couldn’t be all wrong. Sick; twisted like a strangler vine; even horrifying. But not all wrong.
Months passed.
Sam was in Indiana, sitting in the junker he’d bought and scoping out a potentially haunted house, when his alternate phone rang. He didn’t recognize the number.
“Hello?”
“Hey.” Dean’s voice was as tentative as his own. He heard Dean clear his throat. “So, there’s this hunt—oh, fuckit, Sam. Come home.”
The world blurred. “Where are you?”
“Impact, Texas,” Dean said, and even in his stunned condition Sam could tell that Dean was dying to make fun of the name.
“Twelve hours,” Sam said, and started the car.
Of course, after Dean hung up, he had to turn the engine off for a moment, just so he could drape his arms over the steering wheel and cry, just to get it out of his system. But he made it in eleven anyway. The one patrol car that turned on its lights and started after him found an urgent errand elsewhere.
****
The night was warm and clear when he arrived at Dean’s motel. The Impala was parked at the far end of the parking lot, right in front of the last room on the row, no other cars around her.
Dean was sitting on her hood, drinking a beer from a six-pack sitting on the ground by him. He gestured, and Sam picked one of the remaining bottles just to have something to do with his hands. He leaned against the passenger side, crossing his arms over his chest so that he wouldn’t do anything stupid. The metal was warm from the earlier heat, but not uncomfortable.
He heard the clink of Dean’s ring against the glass bottle.
“So you have to shut up until I’m done, ‘cause I spent a lot of time on this,” Dean said at last.
Sam nodded quickly, not daring to turn his head.
“I’m not like you. Things don’t mean the same to you as to me. Some things anyway. You didn’t break me. I’m messed up some, but that’s not on you. You mighta been part of the curse, but you were the whole cure.
“There’s only two things I care about in this world, and that’s hunting evil and you, Sam. I can see a day coming when gettin’ laid goes back on that list, but it always comes last anyway. Well, always since I was sixteen,” Dean added with tactless frankness, and Sam couldn’t suppress a snigger.
“Point is,” Dean continued deliberately, “I needed to get my head together. But I shoulda told you right off that it was only for a while. At least, if you still want to do this.”
Sam wished that Dean had bothered to define ‘this.’ But it didn’t matter, did it? “I do,” he said.
He heard Dean take a swallow of his drink. “Good,” he said. “That’s good.”
And then Dean jumped off the car, his boots crunching in the gravel of the parking lot. Sam kept his eyes closed, but every nerve felt Dean’s approach. He was inches away, he was hovering, he was—
Plucking the unopened beer bottle out of Sam’s hand. Sam’s eyes popped open. “You gonna drink this or just romance it?” Dean asked, his eyes bright.
Sam gaped at him, then recovered and snatched it back. “No takebacks,” he said.
“Big talk for a guy who doesn’t have an opener,” Dean pointed out.
At which point Sam was morally obligated to take a careful look at the cap, concentrate—
The neck of the bottle exploded, glass cubes and beer foam spewing everywhere. Sam dropped what was left of the bottle, wiped his own eyes clean and then grabbed frantically at Dean. Dean’s hands got in the way of Sam’s; Dean’s “shit shit shit” mingled with Sam’s “sorry, sorry—you all right?”
Finally, Dean managed to push Sam back against the car. Dean’s shirt was soaked, but his face was undamaged.
“Uh,” Sam said. “I was nervous?”
Dean grinned, the triumphant grin of a guy who was going to bring this up again and again and again. “Guess you’re making the next beer run,” he said.
“I guess I am,” Sam said. The lightness that filled him was better than any drink.
Dean frowned for a second, then flipped over to a slight smile. “Good to know you haven’t gone all Darth Vader. If a beer can still outsmart you, I’m pretty sure you’re not any kind of threat to the world.”
Sam didn’t much want to talk about that, not right now. Instead he smiled at Dean, stupid with relief, and Dean grinned back.
“There is a hunt, you know,” he said, as if they’d been stopped in the middle of another conversation.
“Of course there is,” Sam agreed. “But right now—” He just wanted to look at Dean, fill his eyes and his consciousness up with Dean’s presence. Sam would have sworn he’d remembered the exact shade of Dean’s eyes, the precise length of his lashes, every faint freckle layered over his skin, but every inch of him seemed new and wonderful in the bad light spilling from the motel.
“Hey,” Dean said softly, as if he were coaxing a stranger out of harm’s way. They were still only inches apart.
Sam’s entire body felt like it might go the same way as the beer bottle. He looked at Dean’s mouth, imagined the feel of Dean’s stubble against his tongue. He coughed and shifted, trying to ease his sudden discomfort. “About that third item on the list,” he said.
Dean shrugged and looked away sheepishly.
“You need to know that I still feel the same way,” Sam said. “I won’t—you don’t have to worry about me, but—that’s just how I feel. I’m not going to tell you I won’t be jealous, but I’ll live.”
Dean smiled at him again, this time with a little sadness mixed in with the sweet. “You won’t need to be jealous,” he said, and the certainty in his voice nearly brought Sam to his knees. “It’s like that chick-flick with the pirates says: True love doesn’t happen every day.”
Like that, they were hugging, Sam bending so that he could put his head on Dean’s shoulder. Dean’s arms around him meant security, just like always. Sam tried to make the same promise with his own grasp. He was fucked up in ten or twenty different ways, so fucked up that ‘freaky demon powers’ didn’t even top the list.
Maybe that was what made him perfect for Dean: Hell, it had taken black magic to convince Dean that Sam actually loved him. Dean was a miracle, but most people didn’t know what to do with miracles when they arrived. Sam wasn’t going to make that mistake. He’d spent enough time being sorry, and here Dean was, choosing him.
Anyone who got in the way of happily ever after—well, Sam was strong and creative, and he’d been pushed around by other agendas enough for twelve lifetimes. With Dean at his side, there was just no limit to what he might do.
END
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Oh, and ruthless Sam is pretty damn hot.
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I loved the way you showed us the violation through Sam's eyes, the way he realizes that it is rape and what that means to Dean as a person and the way he then realizes when talking with Bobby that Dean might think he deserves it or wants it somehow. There are worlds of psychological issues there that you tell in hinting and it's marvelous!
Only to then turn the screw even further, making Sam complicit not only by witnessing but by actually being part of it (and in a way that's simply a literalization of the guilt he already felt to begin with, right?) And then to have to be the one to break it even as he'd been unwilling and unaware perpetrator all too often...
This story's gonna sit with me for a while--it's perfect in how it hits all my buttons only to shift them slightly over into creepy so that it taints me the reader in ways similar to how Sam felt.
Thoughts are just going a mile a minute right now in my mind and I can't fully articulate them (yet), but there are so many layers and you present them so carefully...amazing story!!! Thank you!
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Word. So very true. This felt like performance art - acting on me as I watched the characters being acted upon.
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I thoroughly believe that we all live under a mix of choices and constraints, and so talking about bad situations in terms of consent is sometimes a distraction, or at least meaningless. Dean thinks he's consenting, or wants to think that, or thinks that sometimes; Sam thinks he's not. Dean thinks, or wants to think, that stopping what's happening to him isn't worth Sam going darkside; Sam doesn't think those are the only choices. Sam doesn't mean to be complicit, but he is both at the level of letting Dean pretend he's okay for a long time, and through his desires. I really wanted to make it impossible for Dean to consent to--or not consent to--the cure to lift the curse: asking him for permission would be as damaging as not asking. So if you felt the creepiness, I succeeded.
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The thing that you managed so well was to show Sam's complicitness, his guilt, but also his own victimhood. I mean, curses-made-them-do-it has rarely been that pitifully unpleasant!!! And again, the way it mirrors both Dean's becoming victim but also Sam's (because forcing him to take responsibility and become perpetrator this time by choice is making him victim in yet another way!).
We tend to fetishize noncon situations a lot in fandom and make them either simply b&w or something that's pleasurable and thus makes up for whatever previous unpleasantness. For you to go there and stay there and look into all the dark nooks and crannies for both of them (but esp. for Sam, bc we are complicit in ways quite similar to him, reading as he's watching, enjoying even as we watch Dean be miserable...) is really saying a lot about fandom as much as it is about choice and constraints in general!
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[OK, not the perfect parallelism there, but somewhere, this particular Sam and Dean wouldn't exist if we as readers and writers didn't enjoy seeing our beloved characters suffer...our desires have helped create the scenario however unwillingly if that makes sense...does that make Rivkat the evil dad???? :)]
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Dean is very adaptable, after all.
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it really seems to warrant a heavy psychoanalytic reading...desires and the other and the other's desires...and projections and then the literal manifestation that is a horrid caricature of the love it's meant to testify to...
sorry rivkat...i'll shut up any minute now :)
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But I also love the line about the coven in the first part.
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And that moment when Sam realizes that at least some of it has been directly HIS FAULT- that by wanting him, he causes this- that's an excellent mindfuck, and it also really mindfucks with the readers, as well- draws attention and guilt to this objectification thing we do, how horrible it is... *hands*
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Re: still rambling on...
The thing I love about fandom tropes is that you can really play with them. (They are good to think with, to borrow a phrase.) Pretty much everything I write is a variant of a basic cliche that can be summed up in a phrase like aliens-made-them-do-it. And I'm okay with that!
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Uh, can I selfishly ask which line? I'm always pleased when one stands out.
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Re: still rambling on...
and you *know* i'm all for the repetition part of difference and repetition :)
thanks for making me think!!!!