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Sorry for the delay! I'll post more soon.
Part One
The footsteps down the hallway were different: somebody new, smaller than Bobby, barely making the floorboards creak. Dean sat up with an effort, leaning against the headboard, the molding pressing sharp into his shoulders.
“Well, don’t you Winchester boys keep getting in the worst kind of trouble,” Jo said, staring hard at Dean as she stepped into his room. She was wearing an amulet, so she wouldn’t feel it, the change in him. God, even with it on, he could feel the pull to her, the emptiness that wasn’t true hunger. It wasn’t even arousal any more, and it wasn’t blue balls. It was like that one time he’d been trapped in that crypt in New York, nearly three days before he saw open sky, no food at all and Dad halfway across the state. He’d thought he might die a lot of times, but that was the first time he thought he’d die by degrees, slow and aching.
“You’re looking good,” he said, because it was true. Her eyes had sharpened even more, but she was just as blonde and curved as she’d been back at the Roadhouse. She was wearing a leather jacket, black and worn-in, over a tight-fitting blue T-shirt and jeans.
She shrugged, but he could tell she was fighting a smile. “So,” she said, “Sam says you’ve got some kind of incubus infection. Is it true? Do you really need to--?” She raised her eyebrows instead of finishing the question.
Dean thought about shrugging back, but it seemed like a lot of effort. “I pretty much used up my lifetime supply of ‘I’ll die if you don’t let me’ when I was fifteen, and it felt true then. Now—I don’t know I’m dyin’. Sure feel like shit though.”
“You look—” she said, and he could tell that the sentence wouldn’t have ended well. “Anyway, Sam said—”
Dean chuckled, because he would have paid cash money to hear Sam try to pimp him out. Or maybe he thought of it as pimping Jo out. Hard to predict. “Yeah.”
“So, I said I’d take my chances that you wouldn’t turn me into a dried-up corpse, and here I am.” She smiled, nervousness showing through. “I won’t take the amulet off if you don’t want me to.”
He closed his eyes, because he hadn’t really let himself believe that she’d go for it, even when she’d stepped inside. “Jo, I want you to take off that amulet so bad—”
“Really?” It wasn’t just their past making her so uncertain. Sam must have thought Dean would object to any use of the incubus whammy, even on someone who knew what it did. Sam had warned her she’d have to argue. No wonder he’d gone to all the trouble to get Jo here, Jo who still probably had a little bit of a crush on Dean.
Dean made the effort to open his eyes and raise his head, meeting her gaze and not trying to hide anything from her. “I know I look like crap, but I can promise you it’ll feel good. Long as you understand what’s gonna happen. You take that amulet off, you won’t say no, not until you put it back on.”
She swallowed. Dean watched her mouth, her throat, the swing of her hair against the shoulders of her jacket. “Will I get a chance to put it back on?”
Dean nodded. “There’s a—recovery period.” He could almost taste her now. In a minute he was going to start begging.
But Jo smiled, half nervous and half reassuring. “Okay.” And because she was a hunter and her mother’s daughter, and once she made up her mind to a thing she saw no reason to dilly-dally, she stripped off the amulet right there, dropping it onto the table beside the door.
After that, memory disappeared into a haze of sweat and grappling flesh and knife-sharp relief, like air after nearly drowning.
****
Bobby went to do ill-defined ‘business’ not five minutes after Jo showed up. Sam couldn’t do that—if anything went south, he’d need to clean up the mess.
He didn’t really expect disaster. Well, they were Winchesters; the baseline probability of disaster was high. But Dean’s girls—they tended to survive, even when they got involved in cases. Cassie, that actress, Jamie, Anna--practically the last angel standing by the time Lucifer had been put down. Maybe Dean’s dick really did have magical powers.
This line of thought was depressing for a variety of reasons, so Sam shoved it aside and tried to figure out what would count as sufficient reason to burst in on Dean and Jo.
Even under ordinary circumstances, Dean would never even think to wonder just how difficult it had been for Sam to call Jo. Hi, so I never said I was sorry about that time I got possessed and almost killed you. (Sam suspected he’d done more than that, but he’d been too ashamed to investigate at the time and, given present circumstances, the phone call hadn’t been the right time to bring it up. Maybe he’d ask her when they were all very old and it seemed like it had happened to some other set of God’s punching bags. The thought was almost enough to make him smile: like he was going to get old.)
So after that excruciating conversation, and after Jo dropped everything to come to Bobby’s and help, he got to stand around and think about what was going on in that room. He wondered if it was the same for a woman, that molten rush, every nerve snapping with desire, entering freefall as soon as he’d touched Dean’s skin.
Sam was smart enough not to punch the wall. He didn’t want to have to explain a broken hand to Bobby. He thought about going downstairs, sitting with the bad memories in the panic room. But cold iron wasn’t going to protect him from what was inside him now any more than it had helped him then.
Three hours, he thought. He’d give them three hours, and then he’d at least knock.
****
Jo groaned softly, and cut herself off in the middle. Dean kept his mouth shut, because he'd got nothing to say worth hearing, but he took the break in the action for the opportunity it was and rolled out of the squishy, overused bed. He pulled on his jeans, not bothering with shorts or a shirt, and headed over to the amulet.
Even picking it up by the knot at the end of the thong, the anti-incubus charm heated his fingers unpleasantly, so he flicked it across the room at her. It landed on her belly, the leather snaking across her breasts in a way that he would have found totally hot if he'd had the energy.
He had the unwelcome thought that, even if he did manage to get cured, he’d never do it the natural way with her, because this would ruin the gossamer connection they’d had, the sweet silver thread of maybe that had been there even with their fathers’ deaths and all the demon shit in between them.
"Hey," he said, "you wanna take a break, maybe grab some food?"
She waited a second before agreeing, like she had to think about it for real, and he was so grateful for the kindness that he had to turn away.
“I’m gonna stay in here,” he said, because if he’d been her he would’ve wanted some time away from him to figure out what the fuck he was feeling. Whether the intensity of the experience had anything to do with her and him or whether it was just magic. He could’ve told her that an incubus felt awesome because of the magic. It had nothing to do with love or even real lust. But she needed to work that out for herself.
"I could go for a burger," she said, rustling around as she got dressed.
"There’s a place down the road a bit, does a good one." He didn't want to think about Jo going out for a meal, because that would just lead to wanting to be out in the world himself, and learning how not to want stuff that wasn't for him was the only chance he had to survive.
It was just that a lot of the things that used to make up for what he didn't have were off-limits now.
See, there he went thinking again, and that was never good.
By the sound of it, Jo was dressed now. Dean turned and saw her hide a wince as she stood up from tugging on her boots. The amulet swung on her chest and she wouldn’t meet his eyes. Dean guessed she was going to keep it on for a while even when she was a couple of states away.
“You mind sending Sam in?” he asked. He could have gone himself, but Sam’d want to see Jo and probably ask her a lot of stupid questions about how Dean was doing.
She nodded. Dean backed carefully away from the door so that she didn’t have to get too near to him to leave. She didn’t meet his eyes, and he wondered whether she’d come back to say goodbye.
This time hadn’t been as weird as with the girl at the motel. Maybe he was getting used to it. His head had been a lot clearer, anyway, even if he hadn’t been able to control a fucking thing. He remembered everything, which made him feel a little less crazy. Also, Jo was hot, and even if this had been the world’s most extensive pity fuck, he was grateful.
He probably should have asked her if she was on the pill, or whatever it was that up-to-date hunter girls used. The last thing he wanted was to start another generation of Winchesters for the world to shit on. But Jo was too smart to let herself get caught up; knew too much about what happened to people who got too close to their curse.
Jo was safe. But Jo was also, for that exact reason, not coming back, which meant that Dean’s problem was very far from solved.
****
Sam truly thought that the Olmütz Monastic Libraries collection might have something of use; those Eastern European monks had known their demonic business. But he also needed to be ten hours away from Dean, just to get his head together.
He should have known that driving alone was going to trigger flashbacks: six months of the time the Trickster stole from him, and four months even worse than that. Ruby being in the car had seemed a horrific violation at first, but after a while it had been better than the alternative.
So the road trip only made the hunger worse. He wouldn’t have said, before, that he and Dean touched all that much, but they were regularly just a couple of inches from touching. He could have reached out any time, which was why it never really mattered if he didn’t.
Now Dean couldn’t stand to be within a couple of feet of him. His brain knew it was the amulet, but when it came to Dean his brain never did have the deciding vote.
Dean had held up okay for a few days after Jo left, but Sam thought he was already feeling a little twitchy. He didn’t seem to hold a grudge that Jo’d flipped out (okay, that was unfair, but she knew she was leaving them with no solutions—maybe Dean was just letting Sam hold the grudge for the both of them). And Sam—if Sam stayed there much longer, he was going to suggest the perfect fix.
And then he’d lose Dean for real, whatever Dean’s body needed.
****
The problem wasn’t so much the sex that Dean wanted to have, or even that he couldn’t have it. The problem was that a guy fell all over himself trying to get to Dean when all he’d wanted was some parts for his ancient Corolla. Dean wanted to think that it was the dude’s own damn fault for ignoring the “Closed” sign as if he hadn’t seen it at all, except for how nobody expects incubus ambush as punishment for visiting a closed junkyard.
Dean had made the idiot mistake of actually working on his own goddamn car in the middle of the day, and so he was outside when the guy arrived. Maybe it was the open air or maybe it was that it had been over a week since Jo left, but the man was over a hundred feet away when he got out of his car and he swiveled, like a dog chasing a scent, and started towards Dean.
Dean was already feeling pretty desperate, and he would’ve dropped to his knees if the guy had made it over, except that Bobby had appeared out of fucking nowhere and bashed his would-be customer in the head. Then he’d hustled Dean down into the panic room, where Dean had sat and stewed and wished that jerking off would help. He’d left Dean there until nightfall.
Sam was off to the library at Notre Dame, two states away, looking up some obscure Catholic texts about incubi. The only good news about that, Dean guessed, was it meant that Sam trusted Bobby not to put a bullet in Dean’s head.
But now Dean’s crank had been turned a couple more times, and he could tell he was going to get worse faster. It didn’t feel like anything he could get under control, no matter how much time he had to do it in. It was like—drowning, drowning in fire. Nothing like Hell, because it wasn’t exactly pain, which meant he was defenseless against it.
Fuck but he missed Sam, not a day gone and Dean still felt the lack of him like a chill in the air.
Except Sam had barely been able to look at him since he’d gotten incubus-stung, which—well, the worst part of coming back from Hell, out of a very long list, had been losing Sam’s respect. Getting that back, being brothers again, had been amazing even in the middle of holding the apocalypse back with spit and rock salt. And now Dean had gone and gotten himself all fucked up again. Vulnerable. Sam despised weakness, and Dean couldn’t handle this incubus shit by himself, had to be locked down with amulets and wards.
Dinner that night, served on a little folding table Bobby set up in the panic room, tasted like pencil shavings.
****
It took Sam only five hours to figure out that the monks, whatever their other expertise, had squat when it came to incubus lore. Oh, they had rumors and legends, but nothing Sam hadn’t seen before, and nothing he needed.
He stayed another three hours anyway, hoping for a flash of insight and delaying the time he’d have to go admit his failure to Dean.
Sam could feel the unfairness of it all rising up to choke him, marinating his brain in the same sort of rage that had led him into Ruby’s arms before. They were supposed to--Dean was supposed to be fine. He fucking saved the world, put Lucifer back in his cage, and now some minor demons had invented a whole new torture for him, leaving Sam helpless as usual.
And, like the cherry on top of the infernal sundae, there was his lie, his total betrayal of Dean. He was used to lying, even used to lying to Dean about things that affected his brother. But he’d always been able to tell himself that Dean was better off not knowing the truth. With Stanford, he’d known that he was leaving, and he’d been sure that a quick exit would be the least painful for everyone. With the demon blood, he’d been even more convinced that he was doing the right thing.
Even if that had turned out well, it still wouldn’t justify his current, purely selfish silence.
He needed to confess to Dean. Dean would forgive him for the sex, no question. He’d probably get over Sam’s initial lie, eventually, even if he’d always be a little bitter about Sam’s propensity to hide uncomfortable truths. But first there’d be yelling and disappointment, and Sam didn’t know how he was going to handle the sadness in Dean’s eyes, the puzzlement over why Sam wasn’t a better person. Screwed up with the amulet, screwed up by failing to notice that there was something out of the ordinary about his need to fuck his brother, screwed up by lying, and now screwed up by wanting to do it all over again.
But if he didn’t choose his own time to talk, he was going to spill it anyway, probably at the worst possible time. Either that, or the Trickster was going to show up and tell Dean, just for shits and giggles. Or something worse would happen to reveal his secret. That was just the way the world worked for Winchesters. The best Sam could do would be to explain what had happened, take his lumps (Dean couldn’t even punch him, not while Sam was wearing the amulet), and start moving forward again. Dean’s horror would help erase Sam’s lingering desire.
When he crossed the state line, he had determined that he’d tell Dean as soon as they got some time away from Bobby.
****
Sam’s report that he’d found precisely zip in Indiana was unsurprising but still sucky. Dean did his best to stay out of Sam’s way, working on engines while Sam stood guard, reading in a car parked across the entrance to the yard. Dean didn’t even know where Bobby got himself to, but he was scarce as well.
At night, Dean fled down to the basement where Sam still didn’t like to go. His blood was scalding in his veins, painful and itchy. When he’d been a kid, Dad would run him so hard that ‘horny’ disappeared under total bone-and-sinew weariness. But now, no matter how many pushups and crunches he did, he couldn’t exhaust the need out of himself. With the reality of the situation starting to set in, he thought a lot about his alternatives, and all he could taste was panic, metal and salt and just a hint of sulfur.
Two nights after Sam returned, Dean came upstairs to use the john and Sam followed him back down. There was no ‘I’ve figured it out!’ light in his eyes, so Dean didn’t expect more than some warmed-over angst. Sammy needed to get that kind of thing out of his system every once in a while, and Dean maybe wanted to say a couple self-pitying things himself. He’d miss the awkward hugs, or at least shoulder-shoves, that generally ended these conversations, but if he thought too much about what he wanted from Sam it would probably come out in the self-pitying portion of the evening.
Dean sat on the single bed, feeling the metal frame through the thin, sprung mattress, and looked up at Sam expectantly.
Sam’s face scrunched up like Dean had made a really inappropriate joke. He was holding the book he’d been reading, but apparently it was only a prop because he was just turning it over in his hands.
“What is it?” Dean asked, figuring he ought to kick-start the emo.
“I need to tell you something,” Sam said.
Dean tensed, because Sam’s tone was the one he used when he was about to admit the really crappy stuff, like demon blood. “Okay.” It came out too wary, but how the fuck was he supposed to react?
“I raped you.”
At first Dean didn’t understand the words, and he replayed them a couple of times in his head, but they made even less sense then. He stared at Sam, who was clutching his book like it was the only weight keeping him attached to the earth.
Sam tossed his head back to get the hair out of his eyes and continued, “When I found you. I lost the amulet in the fight, but I’d already killed all the succubi and incubi so I didn’t think it—I didn’t think. I just.”
Dean wasn’t up for reminiscing about his captivity, though it was only about fifteenth on the list of greatest non-hits of his life. By the end he’d been so out of it that he wouldn’t have noticed if John Holmes had fucked him. The problem wasn’t so much the facts as the way Sam’s shoulders were slumped, like he’d lost the car in a card game or something.
Most people were pretty fucked-up about sex, in Dean’s experience, and somehow Sammy had joined the masses, maybe part of his whole impossible quest for normality. If Sam had given Dean another beat-down because of wacky incubus mojo, he wouldn’t have hidden it for so long before giving in to the guilt and confessing. And sure, Dean got that it was probably less socially acceptable to screw your brother than to beat him up (see: fucked-up about sex), but since the question here was whether Sam had exercised any choice about it Dean didn’t understand why that ought to make a difference.
“Sam,” he began, and cursed Sam’s need to talk things out and his own inability to use words about equally. He wanted to ask why Sam had chosen now to spill the beans, but he had a feeling that Sam could explain until his hair was another inch longer and Dean still wouldn’t understand how he thought. “It doesn’t matter.”
Sam laughed, like chunks of broken concrete scattered at a demolition site. “Of course it matters. I—”
He had to cut Sam off before Sam said something he couldn’t come back from. “Dude, you already shot me, this isn’t worse.”
“I didn’t shoot you—” Sam began, automatically, because they’d had this not-quite-fake fight so often that it was just call-and-response. Neither of them counted Meg’s possession, of course. But some supernatural shit was more ambiguous. According to Sam, that crazy doctor’s ghost had put a chunk of rage in Sam’s head and Sam had taken it out on the first person he saw. Honestly, Dean thought that was not nearly as true as Sam liked to believe, but he’d gotten over it a long time ago. “It’s not—” Sam stopped like he’d plowed into a tree.
Dean scratched the back of his neck, wishing that he and Sam lived on the same planet once in a while. “If you tell me you knew it was gonna happen or you could’ve stopped it once it started, then I swear I’ll blame you. If you can’t, then shut up about it already.”
Sam opened and closed his mouth a couple of times, but he raised his head from the goddamned book and met Dean’s eyes.
“I still,” Sam said, too soft. “I remember it. I remember how it felt. With Dr. Ellicott, I was crazy, I wasn’t me. This was—it made sense. You were tied up and covered with—and the thing that seemed obvious to me was that I should—”
“Okay,” Dean said, because Sam was bleeding out. He needed to shut up before he did himself damage. “It didn’t hurt me any, and anyway it’s still not your fault.”
“Is it my fault if I want to take off the amulet right now?” Sam asked, deadly serious.
Dean jerked, because that took them out onto open ocean, no land in sight.
“No, it’s not,” he said, his voice as fragile as spiderweb. His skin was too tight, aching with just the hint that he might get some relief—but holy shit, Sam, Sam couldn’t really want him. Sam (at least when he was in his right mind and not strung out on demon blood) wanted good girls, clean girls, girls who read the New York Times and had plans for their futures. And the revelation that he was only thinking about Sam’s reasons why not should have been another body blow, but Dean was kind of full to bursting with troubles. This was just one more entry in the list of his sins, which was already bigger than the Manhattan Yellow Pages.
“I should go,” Sam said, and Dean bolted upright. That was the last fucking thing Sam needed to do, because if he walked away now he was going to hate himself forever, Dean could see that tattooed across his face.
“No,” he repeated, rock solid this time, moving quick so that Sam would have to go through him to get to the door, and Sam wouldn’t want to do that wearing the amulet. He had a moment of wild speculation—what if Sam could just do him regularly, wear him out—and then he remembered how the guy from the other day had behaved and the fantasy shattered. Sam could fuck him until Dean didn’t know his own name and Dean would still be catnip for random strangers.
Sam smiled at him, weary and disbelieving, the way he’d smiled for a few years back when he was a kid and only angry at Dad, before he’d started getting mad at Dean too for following orders.
“Sam,” he said, wishing that he could get the owner’s manual for the kid’s brain. Most likely there were whole chapters on ‘don’t even bother trying to change his mind.’ “Just—give me a couple seconds here.”
He couldn’t finish a thought—always did better listening to his body, but his body was working for the enemy now. If Sam wanted—the last time he’d said no to Sam, he’d driven Sam straight into Ruby’s arms, too busy listening to angels to notice that Sam was the only one who’d ever put Dean first. Maybe this was just Dean talking himself into thinking that what he wanted would be right for Sam—but he knew that wasn’t true, not usually, and Sam had said he still felt the pull, even with the amulet on. Dean got it: even his fuzzy memories retained an awful lot of the pleasure, and Heaven knew (right down to the bone) that Winchesters didn’t get much in the way of pleasure out of existence.
Dean wasn’t strong enough to resist the promise of making them both happy any more than he’d been strong enough to stay on the rack in Hell. “If you—it’s cool. I need it, it feels good, and if you want to--” He looked up, trying to let his eyes talk for him.
Sam gaped at him. “It’s cool?” he repeated, most likely because he didn’t want to use any other words.
Dean shrugged. “It’s magic. Not like you have a choice, even ignoring how hot I am naturally.” He couldn’t figure out what he was feeling, not with the want rumbling through his body like he was going down a bad stretch of highway at a hundred miles an hour. Inspiration struck: “If you don’t, I’m gonna have to ask Bobby, and nobody wants that.”
Even in the middle of his obvious freakout, Sam was paying enough attention to wince in sympathy at the thought, but his lips were pressed stubbornly together.
Dean sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. Of course Sam was going to make him do the heavy lifting on this. “D’you want me to beg?”
Sam jerked back, inhaling sharply, and stumbled against the bedframe, wobbling until he sat down. Now Dean was the one looking down at him, Sam’s eyes wild and dark, flush high on his cheeks.
Dean couldn’t get more than a few feet away without starting to feel the burn from the amulet. But some of his best moves worked at a distance. He squatted until they were at eye level, keeping his eyes locked to Sam’s.
Sam swallowed, licked his lips—and if Sam thought that pulling fashion-model faces was somehow going to keep Dean from thinking this was a good idea, he was even crazier than he’d been when he’d let Lucifer out of his cage. “You don’t want this,” Sam breathed, and the roughness of his voice told Dean that he wanted to be convinced.
“Look at me.” Dean spread his arms, palms facing Sam, bouncing a little on the balls of his feet. “Still me, Sam. Got some new troubles now, but I’m the same guy. Your idea gets me off and keeps me from feeling like I’m on fire, and it’s not exactly like you’ll be suffering either. So why do you want me to be the one to say no?”
Sam’s mouth worked helplessly. He was probably thinking the really obvious things, realizing that even Dean had to be aware of them, and rejecting them as protests. Dean liked that, as long as the debate stayed in Sam’s head and he didn’t make Dean walk through the arguments with him. For someone who didn’t like running drills, Sam sure was willing to jawbone a lot of routine stuff.
Sam pushed his hands through his hair, nostrils flaring. Dean always thought he looked silly in that pose, like he was trying to keep his head from bulging outwards from the force of his gigantic brain, but right now all Dean could think about was Sam’s big hands, wrapped around his shoulders, shoving him back onto a bed, pressing his knee to his chest.
“I need a little time,” Sam said. Dean’s body twitched with disappointment, but it wasn’t no. And Dean got that this was all too much for anybody to handle—completely fucking par for the course for them, but not any easier because of that. He wouldn’t mind a pause to consider Sam’s revelations himself, if his brain ever got control back from his dick.
He nodded and moved out of the path between Sam and the door. “Promise me you’re not going anywhere, no matter what.” He figured he was entitled to that demand, pathetic as it was.
Sam looked like he’d been slapped, even though he’d been the one threatening to leave not five minutes back. “I promise,” was all he said, and then he was up the stairs and, Dean had to believe, angsting up a storm within the confines of Bobby’s property.
****
You can’t seriously be considering this, Sam told himself fifty times over the next few days. No matter what Dean said he wanted, he was speaking from desperation.
But wasn’t that reason to consider Dean’s suggestion? Jo wasn’t an option any more, and Dean’s reasons for avoiding civilians were far from crazy. Sam hated the idea of some random person taking advantage of Dean’s condition anyway. Unlike somebody else, Sam would remember that there was a person underneath the incubus glamor.
Right, because his reasons for wanting to fuck his brother were entirely noble and had nothing to do with how the incubus poison had made everything right for once in his life. Even when he’d been drinking Ruby’s blood, the thrill of the power had been accompanied by rage and a desperate conviction that the world owed him some payback. Arrogance wasn’t happiness, no matter how much Sam had tried to pretend. The magic drawing him to Dean had been a trick, but at the same time it had been completely real.
It didn’t help that he couldn’t imagine a more intense connection than the bond he shared with Dean, not these days. Before Dean had been infected, that hadn’t mattered. Sam had accepted that his most important relationship in his life was with Dean, and that, correspondingly, he was going to get laid, if at all, the same way Dean did: casually and sporadically, easier not to know much about the other person. But now, Dean was offering the whole package, and he knew for a fact that it didn’t disgust him. Incubus magic had carried him right through that foot-thick barrier like it had been made of frost.
He’d tried so hard to figure out right from wrong. It wasn’t so fucking easy, not with demon blood and prophecy and liars on all sides. All he knew was that every time he’d left Dean, voluntarily or involuntarily, he’d ended up worse off than he’d started, usually with innocents as casualties as well.
He wouldn’t risk that again. But if he abused Dean’s vulnerability now, then when Dean recovered he might not be able to trust Sam any more. He was already too close to believing that Sam would always put his own desires over Dean’s well-being.
Sam would have to be strong until they’d found a cure for Dean. Whatever it took, he’d do.
****
When Sam didn’t return to the panic room that night, Dean knew he’d lost his chance.
Sam was probably right. He couldn’t really want this, not once he’d thought about it, and he didn’t need more reminders of how fucked-up Dean was.
Disappointment was bitter in Dean’s mouth, but familiar.
He couldn’t stop wondering what it had been like with Sam. Even post-Hell when he’d been drinking most seriously, he’d never blacked out and missed an entire hookup.
Sam made himself even more scarce, researching different aspects of incubus lore. Dean kept on working in Bobby’s shop, forcing himself to move forward same as if he’d had a real injury. There was a low-level burn through his body now, like being packed full of coals. It was too bad they’d alienated every remaining hunter in the world except for Bobby and Jo (and the two of them weren’t all that thrilled with the Winchesters either, at this point). He entertained a fantasy about Ellen for a while, but imagination just cranked him a couple of degrees higher. Pretty soon he was going to have to think about hiring someone, except there was no way that an outsider would understand, and there were enough nasty surprises in a working girl’s life that he hated the thought of being another one.
He tried to stay active, at least when Sam was hovering within earshot, but he ended up spending a lot of time propped up on a bench, looking at his tools through half-closed eyes. He was pretty sure Sam was spying on him, but he wasn’t really up to stealth and turning the tables.
Pain could strip away everything else: dignity, morality, love. Turned out desire could work a lot like pain.
Dean was taking a nap—lying down, anyway—in the panic room when Sam came for him for the first time in days.
“Dean,” he said, and the raw need in his voice brought Dean to sitting so fast his head spun.
“Yeah, Sam,” voice rusted nearly through.
“You know it’s not because I want—I just want you to be okay.”
Dean snorted and shook his head, feeling like he was carrying the weight of a spare tire around on his neck. “Yeah, that’s not in the cards, so what’s your second choice?”
Sam closed his eyes. “If you still think you can—I will.”
Under the dull haze of hunger, Dean felt a throb of loss, because he hated that Sam thought he had to offer himself up like this. But Dean wanted him, too, helplessly and totally, even if it cost him Sam’s respect in the long term. There was no long term for him, anyway. “Oh, I can, Sam.”
Sam blinked, and Dean was relieved to see that his eyes were clear. This might be close to whoring himself out for Dean’s sake, but at least Sam was keeping it together.
Slowly, Sam reached for the amulet, closing his hand around the irregular lump of stone. Dean wasn’t sure he even knew he was doing it, yet. Dean clenched his jaw so that he wouldn’t say something that would spook Sam, even though the prospect of sweet relief was making him feel like ants were swarming over his skin. If Sam ended up saying no after this buildup, Dean swore, he was going to get seriously punched, burn or no burn.
Dean rubbed at his mouth, slow, and watched Sam’s eyes follow his fingers helplessly.
“You’re sure?” he asked, and it was all Dean could do to keep from pleading.
He nodded instead, and Sam pulled the cord over his head.
It was like it had been with Jo, and not. Maybe because he hadn’t been waiting quite as long, or maybe because he was getting used to it. He wasn’t remotely in charge or anything, but he was able to notice individual details this time: the way Sam’s skin glowed in the yellow light filtering in from above; the taste of him, strong and almost sour; the springiness and thickness of his hair, enough that Dean could nearly lose his hands in the heavy dark strands—he’d never admit this, but he kind of appreciated Sam’s refusal to get a real haircut, now that he knew how it felt to hang on and curl his fingers through Sam’s thick, shaggy hair.
****
Sam reached out and snagged the amulet from its place on the floor, shivering immediately from the sweat cooling on his body. He got off the mattress, because Dean wasn’t going to tell him that he was too close even if that meant Dean got burnt again, and stumbled into his clothes.
He’d thought he’d known what to expect because of what he’d already done. But Dean wasn’t an incubus. He was something betwixt and between, and instead of the easy logic of the succubus-prompted first time, the magic had been a torrent, filling his lungs and blanking his mind before he heard the amulet hit the floor. He’d fallen on Dean like a cougar taking down a wounded deer, and Dean had surged up against him with equal fervor, as ungoverned as Sam.
Dean wasn’t going to blame him for taking advantage. Dean couldn’t even stay mad about Lucifer. He never did get the point of saying ‘no.’
Sam’s stomach lurched, but even that couldn’t dissipate the fog of pleasure. He already knew that he’d be back as soon as he could convince himself he’d waited long enough.
Dean was staring up at the Devil’s Trap on the ceiling, hands resting loosely on his stomach, his expression content, almost dreamy.
“Was it—” There was no non-humiliating way to ask the question. “You’re going to be okay now, right? For a couple of days anyway.”
Dean sighed and levered himself until he was sitting. “Felt awesome, Sam. But you and I both know I’m not okay.”
Sam shook his head. “We might have to—I mean, Bobby’s not gonna be thrilled with this. But we can go somewhere else while I work on a solution—”
“Where are we gonna go?” Dean asked, deceptively light.
Sam shrugged. “Hunting cabin? There’s places where nobody else ever comes by.”
“I don’t want to live in a cage,” Dean said, picking at a loose thread on the rough blanket.
And that was going nowhere Sam was going to allow. “Listen to me. No matter what, we’re not going to give up. You’re not gonna—I won’t let you sacrifice yourself to protect other people.”
Dean grinned, rickety and uneven. “Not a worry, Sammy.” Sam tilted his head curiously. “I won’t—I can’t go back there a minute earlier than I have to.”
Sam was flummoxed. Dean couldn’t think he was still Hell-bound. No demon had a claim on him.
Dean could read his disbelief, and shrugged. “I’ve done plenty of other things God doesn’t seem to like much. Plus what I did when I—I don’t think what happens in Hell stays in Hell. Seems like the kind of stuff Heaven notices, you know?”
Sam had said the first thing that occurred to him. “But Dad—”
Dean looked away. “They never got to him,” he said with devastating conviction. “He—you saw the look on his face when he got out. Twice as long as me, and he didn’t. He wouldn’t. So anyway, yeah, no way am I checking out early. Don’t want to whammy anybody into fucking me, but I will if I have to.”
Dean had built a neat trap, no less powerful for its obviousness: Sam couldn’t explain how ridiculous Dean’s assumptions about his proper fate were without at the same time encouraging him to off himself. Sam knew he’d figure out how to approach the topic eventually, but right now he was routed, and they both knew it.
“I’m gonna stay down here a while,” Dean said. Sam wanted to touch him—not like that, just to reassure himself that his brother was still there, still breathing. But he couldn’t, so he took the dismissal for what it was and headed back upstairs to his useless books and his cold bed.
****
So now, on top of everything else, they were sneaking around Bobby’s like a pair of kids who’d just figured out what their dicks were for. Dean put it fifty-fifty at best whether Bobby had an idea of why Dean wasn’t so sickly any more, but there was no talking about it.
Whenever they were alone Sam would put his hand to the amulet, his way of asking whether Dean wanted him to take it off, and Dean nodded every single time. After, Sam didn’t say anything about how he felt about the sex, which was like a birthday gift until Dean remembered that caring-and-sharing Sam had disappeared somewhere right around the time Dean went to Hell. Dean wasn’t the type to think about what all this ‘meant’ for their relationship or whatever, but he did wonder sometimes what was going on in Sam’s enormous head.
He found himself half proud of Sam’s he-man habits and half embarrassed, neither of which he’d admit short of torture. Sam was a Viking in the sack, on the occasions they made it to the sack. Dean was plenty kinky himself—the only suggestions he’d ever turned down involved blood or bondage he couldn’t release on his own—but Sam seemed to think that each encounter had to be an Olympic trial. Lots of slamming against walls and hoisting into the air and honest-to-fuck growling. Bite marks and bruises and, yeah, okay, Dean looked at them sometimes, after, when he was alone. It felt good, being wanted like that, even if it was fake.
He knew if he said anything Sam would conclude that Dean was criticizing, which was not even close to true. Just, sex was fun and hot and all, but if this was anything like Sam was with girls, maybe Dean shouldn’t’ve ragged on him all those years for keeping it in his pants most of the time. Sam fucked seriously, and Dean found himself not that thrilled with the thought of Sam handing pieces of himself out like that all over the country.
Dean could never match what Sam had to give, even if he could scratch and suck hickeys so Sam’s skin looked the same as his, after.
Dying had taught Dean that Sam wasn’t ever going to get normal while he thought that Dean still needed saving, or even avenging. Dean needed to make sure that he was safe, truly safe, and then Sam would be able to move on. And sure, it was selfish of Dean to ask Sam to submit to the incubus glamor in the meantime, but he’d always be selfish when it came to Sam, holding on so tight that it only made Sam want to get further away in the end.
He had to find a permanent fix. Sam was twisting himself up for Dean again. Dean was grateful that this time they weren’t heading towards apocalypse, of course, but that wasn’t a huge consolation when he glanced over towards Sam and watched Sam jerk away, like he couldn’t stand Dean’s eyes on him.
****
“Come out here, Sam,” Bobby called, and Sam closed De Imaginibus and slotted it back into its place on Bobby’s shelf.
“I’ve got a friend in Maryland, name of David Kelty,” Bobby said as soon as Sam got through the doorway to the kitchen. Dean was nodding beside him: Sam was just now being filled in, which was annoying but not particularly suprising when it came to the two of them.
“You’ve got a phone book’s worth of friends,” Sam said, not quite as snidely as he would have said it to Dad (not that it would have been true for Dad). “What’s special about this one?”
“He thinks he can help Dean learn to control the incubus glamor.”
Sam felt a wash of pure relief, but it dissolved when he realized that Dean didn’t look nearly as happy. “It’s not gonna be easy, Sam. It’ll probably take a while.” Dean had his hands flat on the table in front of him, leaning forward. His eyes were gold-flecked in the light coming in through Bobby’s kitchen window. Sam wanted to grab him and take him upstairs.
“How long?” he asked.
Dean and Bobby exchanged glances. “Could be a year,” Bobby said. Dean swallowed and dipped his chin a fraction in acceptance. “Dean’s gonna go to his place in Maryland.”
“I’ll stay with you,” Sam said immediately, suppressing the desire to explain to Bobby just how unacceptable a lengthy separation was, given that Dean was his.
Dean shook his head, as did Bobby. “David was pretty specific, no outside presence,” Bobby said gently. “Truth be told, it’s already a long shot. If he says he needs Dean alone, Dean better go alone.”
Dean’s eyes were luminous in his too-pale face. He couldn’t take care of himself like this. Sam could fuck him, but not fix him, and Dean needed the latter a lot more than the former. None of his research was coming up with any endgame, and with the fragments of rationality remaining to him Sam recognized that their situation was not stable, no matter how good it felt in the moment. Sam couldn’t let his own fucked-up obsession get in the way of helping Dean. If this Kelty guy could do that, then they had to go along with his demands.
“How are we gonna get Dean there?” he asked.
Dean actually smiled. “This is pretty cool. Bobby figured out how to amp up that spell we use on the car.” The incantation had a long Greek name and a longer pedigree, but Sam had called it the Somebody-Else’s-Problem field since the moment he’d learned about it. It couldn’t make people ignore the car—that would invite total disaster in traffic—but it could make people incurious, or forgetful about the color, make and model.
That spell had doubtless saved their asses more than once, because a 1967 Impala in cherry condition—the only condition Dean would generally allow—was not exactly inconspicuous, and they tended to drive fast and leave the car parked in plain sight. The field’s worst failure had been when Bela had contrived to have the Impala towed; she must have used a very precise cantrip, because Sam hadn’t even needed to reset the spell once they’d retrieved the car.
If Bobby had increased the power of the spell to cover Dean’s glamor, then Dean would be as safe as he was going to get. Safer even than he was at Bobby’s, most likely.
Dean was almost bouncing on his feet. “Gonna have to piss in a bottle, but he figures I’ll be fine long as nobody gets too close.”
“Okay,” Sam said. “So when do we leave?”
****
Bobby sold the story just like he’d said he would, and Sam was nearly cheerful as they set out.
It was awesome to be back on the road, even for a short trip, even though Dean couldn’t get out for a shit or a shower or a shave. He still got the wind in his face, the thrum of his baby under and around him, and Sammy in the passenger seat, safe and sound. The heat of the amulet built up over time in an enclosed space, but it wasn’t close to incapacitating; after a day driving, he had nothing worse than a bad sunburn on his right side.
Bobby took care of calling ahead to Kelty and explaining what Sam expected to find. Kelty was cool with it, had even set up a room for Sam to see full of mystical soothing crap, supposedly to help Dean focus his energies. Dean wasn’t surprised. A guy like Kelty had to be used to telling people what they wanted to hear, and Bobby’s proposition had promised to make Kelty an awful lot of money.
The room was underground, heavily warded against outsiders. Nobody was getting in who wasn’t preapproved. Dean figured he’d throw out all the New Age stuff once Sam took off, and then there’d be space for a widescreen TV.
“You’re gonna be okay here?” Sam asked after he’d inspected every last crystal and hanging. Kelty, who turned out to be a short dark-haired guy Dean would have had trouble picking out of a lineup, had politely disappeared after showing them around his place.
“Why wouldn’t I be?” Dean slung his bag onto the bed and thought about opening up the tiny dresser. Small as it was, his clothes weren’t going to fill it, but the duffel was out of place and probably should go in the closet. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a closet worth using for something other than hiding shit from housekeeping. Probably Sam’s senior year of high school, back when they were still renting houses, except by then he’d left too much stuff behind during rushed departures to trust in closets. So maybe it was earlier than that.
Stupid to pay so much attention to a silly thing like a closet, anyway. Sam was just watching him, standing in the center of the room and making everything around him seem smaller.
“Dean,” he said. Dean took two steps and grabbed him, fiercely, ignoring the burn where the amulet immediately set his skin on fire. Sam hugged back just as painfully hard, until he remembered the amulet and tried to struggle free.
“’s okay,” Dean said, but Sam wouldn’t listen, pushing him away. This near, Sam didn’t have his usual advantage in reach and weight, but he was still strong as a horse and Dean was forced back, Sam’s hands tight on his shoulders, arms braced to keep Dean from coming closer.
“Dean,” Sam said again.
This was the last time he’d—No, bad idea to think that way. But he wanted to hold his brother, dammit.
Carefully, he put his hands around Sam’s wrists, keeping his touch gentle. He leaned his head forward, close as he could get without an immediately obvious burn. “Take it off.”
“No,” Sam said, twisting free. But that was just an opening gambit, Dean knew.
“Last chance, Sam.”
“We don’t—you shouldn’t need—if this guy knows what he’s doing--”
Dean rolled his eyes. “So maybe I want one last go, before he turns me into a monk.” He wished Sam wasn’t so hung up on rhyme and reason. How many people got to have freaky incubus-awesome sex without the bummer side effect of drained life energy? And here Sam was turning it down.
Or trying. He could see the uncertainty in Sam’s stance, swaying just a little. The crease between his eyes yelled out that Sam was fighting an inner war. Dean wanted to tell Sam to stop thinking and let Dean take care of him, but saying anything like that out loud would only trigger Sam’s jackass-stubborn side.
They’d already crossed that line. One more time wouldn’t hurt. “Sam,” he whispered, the word like the beat of his heart.
****
Sometimes Sam told himself that the incubus venom, or whatever it was stuck in Dean’s body, must be physically addictive. He already had a vulnerability for that kind of thing, and he’d never found a Demon Blood Drinkers Anonymous to teach him the right skills to resist a new dependence.
But Bobby’d kept pretty good track of Jo, and, careful to keep even a hint of concern away from Dean, he’d reported to Sam that Jo neither admitted to nor demonstrated any lingering side effects from her time with Dean. The girl from the motel was also continuing with her daily life and not wasting away, as far as the PI Sam hired could tell. So any addiction Sam had was psychological.
Story of his life, really.
Because it was good, synapse-meltingly good, every touch and thrust. The taste he’d had when Dean had been mostly unconscious was nothing like what happened when Dean was an active (not willing, no matter how hard that was to remember) participant. Even without the incubus glamor, Dean was an exquisitely physical animal; with the boost of magic, Sam worshiped him.
When Dean asked for the last time in Kelty’s shabby little basement apartment, Sam honestly tried—wanted—tried to want to say no. But he didn’t have the willpower.
What scared him most wasn’t the lack of control. It was that he couldn’t tell the difference any more between what he wanted when the amulet was on and what he wanted when it was off.
The air was chilly and a little damp, but as soon as Sam had tossed the necklace into the corner, the only discomfort he felt was the distance from Dean, and that was easily fixed.
His hands were clumsy, like they were actually swollen with the desire spilling out of his skin, tugging and tearing at Dean’s clothes as Dean reciprocated, Sam’s mouth already settled at the arc of Dean’s shoulder, too greedy even to wait for him to be naked. There was a brief and painful interlude when Sam wrestled Dean’s shirt over his head, and no way was Sam disengaging for that a second time, so he just batted Dean’s hands away from his own worn T-shirt, then returned to shoving Dean’s jeans off his hips, belt flapping uselessly around them.
Dean stumbled out of his boots and jeans as Sam pushed him back across the room, ending up at the low dresser that was just the right height. Dean groaned, charcoal-rough, as Sam bit along the line of his jaw, tasting salt and leather. Then Sam spun him around, Dean’s hands flying out to catch himself on the wood, his nose nearly smashing into its reflection in the mirror above the dresser. Sam barely recognized himself, wild-eyed over Dean’s shoulder, face flushed and hair already sticking to his forehead with sex sweat.
Sam opened his jeans one-handed, pushing Dean down with his other hand outspread on Dean’s back, Dean’s shoulders bunching as his head dropped and his ass thrust back, spreading his legs for Sam. Dean’s compliance made him crazy; he grabbed the back of Dean’s thigh and pushed until Dean’s knee was up on the dresser, Dean shakily balanced on the ball of his other foot. Sam spat in his hand, reached down to slick himself while he folded himself over Dean and mouthed at the back of his neck.
Dean was tighter than he had any right to be, blood-hot and almost painful, just the edge Sam needed. He’d never fucked anyone Dean’s size before, his hand barely able to cover the side of Dean’s face, and it was a thrill to be able to control Dean so easily, all that breadth and strength submitting as he groaned under Sam. Sam took a mouthful of Dean’s flesh and tugged at it with his teeth, just to hear Dean gasp.
When he looked up, he could see Dean’s face in the mirror, eyes green as fairy lights, glowing with ecstasy. Dean wanted this, wanted him to fuck in so hard the wood creaked under them and the mirror shivered in its frame. Dean’s fingers slipped across the surface of the dresser until he gave up and pressed his palms against their reflection, fighting just to avoid being slammed into the glass with Sam’s thrusts. He whined and Sam wrestled a hand around to fist his cock, hotter even than the rest of him, pulsing almost immediately with his orgasm, the shudder wracking his whole body.
Sam’s forehead pushed into the center of Dean’s back as he grabbed on to Dean’s hips and came with a choked-off groan.
His toes were numb.
Still vibrating with pleasure, he eased back. Dean made a small grumbling noise, but it didn’t sound like pain. Sectors of Sam’s brain were coming back online, far too quickly. He was just glad that he hadn’t said anything out loud, though there was very little that would have been more damning than what he’d done.
Damning, there was a word.
He couldn’t stop himself from running his fingers down the line of Dean’s spine. Then he tugged at his shorts and jeans until he was nearly decent. He didn’t want to move away, but he only had a couple of minutes before the glamor kicked in again, so he went and recovered the amulet, leaving Dean to get dressed.
Fully clothed again, Dean turned to him and opened his mouth, but something in Sam’s expression must have been too much even for Dean, who flicked his eyes away and rubbed at his chin where the stubble was threatening to become a beard after days on the road.
“Call me.” The words erupted from Sam before he knew he was going to say them. “Every day. At least.”
Dean’s lips twitched into a smile. “Really, Sam?”
He shook his head, willing Dean not to start in on the bullshit, because Sam was not a weepy teen and also he had plenty of good reasons to want to stay in constant contact with his brother. Dean’s expression softened as they stared at each other, until his lashes dipped and Sam knew he’d won.
“Might be pretty busy chanting and lighting candles, but I’ll see what I can do,” he said.
Sam hurt with not being able to reach out and hug him, squeeze him until Dean admitted that he didn’t want to split up either. “If I don’t hear from you, I’m coming right back here, and Bobby’s friend can just hang his crystals off of me while you work.”
Dean snorted. “Yeah, I bet you’d look awful pretty like that.”
“Big words for a guy who—” Sam began, intending to say something about just how many times Dean’s mouth had specifically been referenced by various rednecks angry at being hustled, then remembered himself and choked to a halt.
Dean’s mouth quirked, then settled on a smile that looked more like he’d just taken a punch. But Sam couldn’t apologize, because that would only make the problem worse. He swallowed. “Anyway. You call me, okay?”
Dean chewed on his lower lip for a second. “Sure, Sammy.”
Leaving was like breaking bones. But for once he was doing it for Dean’s own good, and that had to be enough.
Part 3
Part One
The footsteps down the hallway were different: somebody new, smaller than Bobby, barely making the floorboards creak. Dean sat up with an effort, leaning against the headboard, the molding pressing sharp into his shoulders.
“Well, don’t you Winchester boys keep getting in the worst kind of trouble,” Jo said, staring hard at Dean as she stepped into his room. She was wearing an amulet, so she wouldn’t feel it, the change in him. God, even with it on, he could feel the pull to her, the emptiness that wasn’t true hunger. It wasn’t even arousal any more, and it wasn’t blue balls. It was like that one time he’d been trapped in that crypt in New York, nearly three days before he saw open sky, no food at all and Dad halfway across the state. He’d thought he might die a lot of times, but that was the first time he thought he’d die by degrees, slow and aching.
“You’re looking good,” he said, because it was true. Her eyes had sharpened even more, but she was just as blonde and curved as she’d been back at the Roadhouse. She was wearing a leather jacket, black and worn-in, over a tight-fitting blue T-shirt and jeans.
She shrugged, but he could tell she was fighting a smile. “So,” she said, “Sam says you’ve got some kind of incubus infection. Is it true? Do you really need to--?” She raised her eyebrows instead of finishing the question.
Dean thought about shrugging back, but it seemed like a lot of effort. “I pretty much used up my lifetime supply of ‘I’ll die if you don’t let me’ when I was fifteen, and it felt true then. Now—I don’t know I’m dyin’. Sure feel like shit though.”
“You look—” she said, and he could tell that the sentence wouldn’t have ended well. “Anyway, Sam said—”
Dean chuckled, because he would have paid cash money to hear Sam try to pimp him out. Or maybe he thought of it as pimping Jo out. Hard to predict. “Yeah.”
“So, I said I’d take my chances that you wouldn’t turn me into a dried-up corpse, and here I am.” She smiled, nervousness showing through. “I won’t take the amulet off if you don’t want me to.”
He closed his eyes, because he hadn’t really let himself believe that she’d go for it, even when she’d stepped inside. “Jo, I want you to take off that amulet so bad—”
“Really?” It wasn’t just their past making her so uncertain. Sam must have thought Dean would object to any use of the incubus whammy, even on someone who knew what it did. Sam had warned her she’d have to argue. No wonder he’d gone to all the trouble to get Jo here, Jo who still probably had a little bit of a crush on Dean.
Dean made the effort to open his eyes and raise his head, meeting her gaze and not trying to hide anything from her. “I know I look like crap, but I can promise you it’ll feel good. Long as you understand what’s gonna happen. You take that amulet off, you won’t say no, not until you put it back on.”
She swallowed. Dean watched her mouth, her throat, the swing of her hair against the shoulders of her jacket. “Will I get a chance to put it back on?”
Dean nodded. “There’s a—recovery period.” He could almost taste her now. In a minute he was going to start begging.
But Jo smiled, half nervous and half reassuring. “Okay.” And because she was a hunter and her mother’s daughter, and once she made up her mind to a thing she saw no reason to dilly-dally, she stripped off the amulet right there, dropping it onto the table beside the door.
After that, memory disappeared into a haze of sweat and grappling flesh and knife-sharp relief, like air after nearly drowning.
****
Bobby went to do ill-defined ‘business’ not five minutes after Jo showed up. Sam couldn’t do that—if anything went south, he’d need to clean up the mess.
He didn’t really expect disaster. Well, they were Winchesters; the baseline probability of disaster was high. But Dean’s girls—they tended to survive, even when they got involved in cases. Cassie, that actress, Jamie, Anna--practically the last angel standing by the time Lucifer had been put down. Maybe Dean’s dick really did have magical powers.
This line of thought was depressing for a variety of reasons, so Sam shoved it aside and tried to figure out what would count as sufficient reason to burst in on Dean and Jo.
Even under ordinary circumstances, Dean would never even think to wonder just how difficult it had been for Sam to call Jo. Hi, so I never said I was sorry about that time I got possessed and almost killed you. (Sam suspected he’d done more than that, but he’d been too ashamed to investigate at the time and, given present circumstances, the phone call hadn’t been the right time to bring it up. Maybe he’d ask her when they were all very old and it seemed like it had happened to some other set of God’s punching bags. The thought was almost enough to make him smile: like he was going to get old.)
So after that excruciating conversation, and after Jo dropped everything to come to Bobby’s and help, he got to stand around and think about what was going on in that room. He wondered if it was the same for a woman, that molten rush, every nerve snapping with desire, entering freefall as soon as he’d touched Dean’s skin.
Sam was smart enough not to punch the wall. He didn’t want to have to explain a broken hand to Bobby. He thought about going downstairs, sitting with the bad memories in the panic room. But cold iron wasn’t going to protect him from what was inside him now any more than it had helped him then.
Three hours, he thought. He’d give them three hours, and then he’d at least knock.
****
Jo groaned softly, and cut herself off in the middle. Dean kept his mouth shut, because he'd got nothing to say worth hearing, but he took the break in the action for the opportunity it was and rolled out of the squishy, overused bed. He pulled on his jeans, not bothering with shorts or a shirt, and headed over to the amulet.
Even picking it up by the knot at the end of the thong, the anti-incubus charm heated his fingers unpleasantly, so he flicked it across the room at her. It landed on her belly, the leather snaking across her breasts in a way that he would have found totally hot if he'd had the energy.
He had the unwelcome thought that, even if he did manage to get cured, he’d never do it the natural way with her, because this would ruin the gossamer connection they’d had, the sweet silver thread of maybe that had been there even with their fathers’ deaths and all the demon shit in between them.
"Hey," he said, "you wanna take a break, maybe grab some food?"
She waited a second before agreeing, like she had to think about it for real, and he was so grateful for the kindness that he had to turn away.
“I’m gonna stay in here,” he said, because if he’d been her he would’ve wanted some time away from him to figure out what the fuck he was feeling. Whether the intensity of the experience had anything to do with her and him or whether it was just magic. He could’ve told her that an incubus felt awesome because of the magic. It had nothing to do with love or even real lust. But she needed to work that out for herself.
"I could go for a burger," she said, rustling around as she got dressed.
"There’s a place down the road a bit, does a good one." He didn't want to think about Jo going out for a meal, because that would just lead to wanting to be out in the world himself, and learning how not to want stuff that wasn't for him was the only chance he had to survive.
It was just that a lot of the things that used to make up for what he didn't have were off-limits now.
See, there he went thinking again, and that was never good.
By the sound of it, Jo was dressed now. Dean turned and saw her hide a wince as she stood up from tugging on her boots. The amulet swung on her chest and she wouldn’t meet his eyes. Dean guessed she was going to keep it on for a while even when she was a couple of states away.
“You mind sending Sam in?” he asked. He could have gone himself, but Sam’d want to see Jo and probably ask her a lot of stupid questions about how Dean was doing.
She nodded. Dean backed carefully away from the door so that she didn’t have to get too near to him to leave. She didn’t meet his eyes, and he wondered whether she’d come back to say goodbye.
This time hadn’t been as weird as with the girl at the motel. Maybe he was getting used to it. His head had been a lot clearer, anyway, even if he hadn’t been able to control a fucking thing. He remembered everything, which made him feel a little less crazy. Also, Jo was hot, and even if this had been the world’s most extensive pity fuck, he was grateful.
He probably should have asked her if she was on the pill, or whatever it was that up-to-date hunter girls used. The last thing he wanted was to start another generation of Winchesters for the world to shit on. But Jo was too smart to let herself get caught up; knew too much about what happened to people who got too close to their curse.
Jo was safe. But Jo was also, for that exact reason, not coming back, which meant that Dean’s problem was very far from solved.
****
Sam truly thought that the Olmütz Monastic Libraries collection might have something of use; those Eastern European monks had known their demonic business. But he also needed to be ten hours away from Dean, just to get his head together.
He should have known that driving alone was going to trigger flashbacks: six months of the time the Trickster stole from him, and four months even worse than that. Ruby being in the car had seemed a horrific violation at first, but after a while it had been better than the alternative.
So the road trip only made the hunger worse. He wouldn’t have said, before, that he and Dean touched all that much, but they were regularly just a couple of inches from touching. He could have reached out any time, which was why it never really mattered if he didn’t.
Now Dean couldn’t stand to be within a couple of feet of him. His brain knew it was the amulet, but when it came to Dean his brain never did have the deciding vote.
Dean had held up okay for a few days after Jo left, but Sam thought he was already feeling a little twitchy. He didn’t seem to hold a grudge that Jo’d flipped out (okay, that was unfair, but she knew she was leaving them with no solutions—maybe Dean was just letting Sam hold the grudge for the both of them). And Sam—if Sam stayed there much longer, he was going to suggest the perfect fix.
And then he’d lose Dean for real, whatever Dean’s body needed.
****
The problem wasn’t so much the sex that Dean wanted to have, or even that he couldn’t have it. The problem was that a guy fell all over himself trying to get to Dean when all he’d wanted was some parts for his ancient Corolla. Dean wanted to think that it was the dude’s own damn fault for ignoring the “Closed” sign as if he hadn’t seen it at all, except for how nobody expects incubus ambush as punishment for visiting a closed junkyard.
Dean had made the idiot mistake of actually working on his own goddamn car in the middle of the day, and so he was outside when the guy arrived. Maybe it was the open air or maybe it was that it had been over a week since Jo left, but the man was over a hundred feet away when he got out of his car and he swiveled, like a dog chasing a scent, and started towards Dean.
Dean was already feeling pretty desperate, and he would’ve dropped to his knees if the guy had made it over, except that Bobby had appeared out of fucking nowhere and bashed his would-be customer in the head. Then he’d hustled Dean down into the panic room, where Dean had sat and stewed and wished that jerking off would help. He’d left Dean there until nightfall.
Sam was off to the library at Notre Dame, two states away, looking up some obscure Catholic texts about incubi. The only good news about that, Dean guessed, was it meant that Sam trusted Bobby not to put a bullet in Dean’s head.
But now Dean’s crank had been turned a couple more times, and he could tell he was going to get worse faster. It didn’t feel like anything he could get under control, no matter how much time he had to do it in. It was like—drowning, drowning in fire. Nothing like Hell, because it wasn’t exactly pain, which meant he was defenseless against it.
Fuck but he missed Sam, not a day gone and Dean still felt the lack of him like a chill in the air.
Except Sam had barely been able to look at him since he’d gotten incubus-stung, which—well, the worst part of coming back from Hell, out of a very long list, had been losing Sam’s respect. Getting that back, being brothers again, had been amazing even in the middle of holding the apocalypse back with spit and rock salt. And now Dean had gone and gotten himself all fucked up again. Vulnerable. Sam despised weakness, and Dean couldn’t handle this incubus shit by himself, had to be locked down with amulets and wards.
Dinner that night, served on a little folding table Bobby set up in the panic room, tasted like pencil shavings.
****
It took Sam only five hours to figure out that the monks, whatever their other expertise, had squat when it came to incubus lore. Oh, they had rumors and legends, but nothing Sam hadn’t seen before, and nothing he needed.
He stayed another three hours anyway, hoping for a flash of insight and delaying the time he’d have to go admit his failure to Dean.
Sam could feel the unfairness of it all rising up to choke him, marinating his brain in the same sort of rage that had led him into Ruby’s arms before. They were supposed to--Dean was supposed to be fine. He fucking saved the world, put Lucifer back in his cage, and now some minor demons had invented a whole new torture for him, leaving Sam helpless as usual.
And, like the cherry on top of the infernal sundae, there was his lie, his total betrayal of Dean. He was used to lying, even used to lying to Dean about things that affected his brother. But he’d always been able to tell himself that Dean was better off not knowing the truth. With Stanford, he’d known that he was leaving, and he’d been sure that a quick exit would be the least painful for everyone. With the demon blood, he’d been even more convinced that he was doing the right thing.
Even if that had turned out well, it still wouldn’t justify his current, purely selfish silence.
He needed to confess to Dean. Dean would forgive him for the sex, no question. He’d probably get over Sam’s initial lie, eventually, even if he’d always be a little bitter about Sam’s propensity to hide uncomfortable truths. But first there’d be yelling and disappointment, and Sam didn’t know how he was going to handle the sadness in Dean’s eyes, the puzzlement over why Sam wasn’t a better person. Screwed up with the amulet, screwed up by failing to notice that there was something out of the ordinary about his need to fuck his brother, screwed up by lying, and now screwed up by wanting to do it all over again.
But if he didn’t choose his own time to talk, he was going to spill it anyway, probably at the worst possible time. Either that, or the Trickster was going to show up and tell Dean, just for shits and giggles. Or something worse would happen to reveal his secret. That was just the way the world worked for Winchesters. The best Sam could do would be to explain what had happened, take his lumps (Dean couldn’t even punch him, not while Sam was wearing the amulet), and start moving forward again. Dean’s horror would help erase Sam’s lingering desire.
When he crossed the state line, he had determined that he’d tell Dean as soon as they got some time away from Bobby.
****
Sam’s report that he’d found precisely zip in Indiana was unsurprising but still sucky. Dean did his best to stay out of Sam’s way, working on engines while Sam stood guard, reading in a car parked across the entrance to the yard. Dean didn’t even know where Bobby got himself to, but he was scarce as well.
At night, Dean fled down to the basement where Sam still didn’t like to go. His blood was scalding in his veins, painful and itchy. When he’d been a kid, Dad would run him so hard that ‘horny’ disappeared under total bone-and-sinew weariness. But now, no matter how many pushups and crunches he did, he couldn’t exhaust the need out of himself. With the reality of the situation starting to set in, he thought a lot about his alternatives, and all he could taste was panic, metal and salt and just a hint of sulfur.
Two nights after Sam returned, Dean came upstairs to use the john and Sam followed him back down. There was no ‘I’ve figured it out!’ light in his eyes, so Dean didn’t expect more than some warmed-over angst. Sammy needed to get that kind of thing out of his system every once in a while, and Dean maybe wanted to say a couple self-pitying things himself. He’d miss the awkward hugs, or at least shoulder-shoves, that generally ended these conversations, but if he thought too much about what he wanted from Sam it would probably come out in the self-pitying portion of the evening.
Dean sat on the single bed, feeling the metal frame through the thin, sprung mattress, and looked up at Sam expectantly.
Sam’s face scrunched up like Dean had made a really inappropriate joke. He was holding the book he’d been reading, but apparently it was only a prop because he was just turning it over in his hands.
“What is it?” Dean asked, figuring he ought to kick-start the emo.
“I need to tell you something,” Sam said.
Dean tensed, because Sam’s tone was the one he used when he was about to admit the really crappy stuff, like demon blood. “Okay.” It came out too wary, but how the fuck was he supposed to react?
“I raped you.”
At first Dean didn’t understand the words, and he replayed them a couple of times in his head, but they made even less sense then. He stared at Sam, who was clutching his book like it was the only weight keeping him attached to the earth.
Sam tossed his head back to get the hair out of his eyes and continued, “When I found you. I lost the amulet in the fight, but I’d already killed all the succubi and incubi so I didn’t think it—I didn’t think. I just.”
Dean wasn’t up for reminiscing about his captivity, though it was only about fifteenth on the list of greatest non-hits of his life. By the end he’d been so out of it that he wouldn’t have noticed if John Holmes had fucked him. The problem wasn’t so much the facts as the way Sam’s shoulders were slumped, like he’d lost the car in a card game or something.
Most people were pretty fucked-up about sex, in Dean’s experience, and somehow Sammy had joined the masses, maybe part of his whole impossible quest for normality. If Sam had given Dean another beat-down because of wacky incubus mojo, he wouldn’t have hidden it for so long before giving in to the guilt and confessing. And sure, Dean got that it was probably less socially acceptable to screw your brother than to beat him up (see: fucked-up about sex), but since the question here was whether Sam had exercised any choice about it Dean didn’t understand why that ought to make a difference.
“Sam,” he began, and cursed Sam’s need to talk things out and his own inability to use words about equally. He wanted to ask why Sam had chosen now to spill the beans, but he had a feeling that Sam could explain until his hair was another inch longer and Dean still wouldn’t understand how he thought. “It doesn’t matter.”
Sam laughed, like chunks of broken concrete scattered at a demolition site. “Of course it matters. I—”
He had to cut Sam off before Sam said something he couldn’t come back from. “Dude, you already shot me, this isn’t worse.”
“I didn’t shoot you—” Sam began, automatically, because they’d had this not-quite-fake fight so often that it was just call-and-response. Neither of them counted Meg’s possession, of course. But some supernatural shit was more ambiguous. According to Sam, that crazy doctor’s ghost had put a chunk of rage in Sam’s head and Sam had taken it out on the first person he saw. Honestly, Dean thought that was not nearly as true as Sam liked to believe, but he’d gotten over it a long time ago. “It’s not—” Sam stopped like he’d plowed into a tree.
Dean scratched the back of his neck, wishing that he and Sam lived on the same planet once in a while. “If you tell me you knew it was gonna happen or you could’ve stopped it once it started, then I swear I’ll blame you. If you can’t, then shut up about it already.”
Sam opened and closed his mouth a couple of times, but he raised his head from the goddamned book and met Dean’s eyes.
“I still,” Sam said, too soft. “I remember it. I remember how it felt. With Dr. Ellicott, I was crazy, I wasn’t me. This was—it made sense. You were tied up and covered with—and the thing that seemed obvious to me was that I should—”
“Okay,” Dean said, because Sam was bleeding out. He needed to shut up before he did himself damage. “It didn’t hurt me any, and anyway it’s still not your fault.”
“Is it my fault if I want to take off the amulet right now?” Sam asked, deadly serious.
Dean jerked, because that took them out onto open ocean, no land in sight.
“No, it’s not,” he said, his voice as fragile as spiderweb. His skin was too tight, aching with just the hint that he might get some relief—but holy shit, Sam, Sam couldn’t really want him. Sam (at least when he was in his right mind and not strung out on demon blood) wanted good girls, clean girls, girls who read the New York Times and had plans for their futures. And the revelation that he was only thinking about Sam’s reasons why not should have been another body blow, but Dean was kind of full to bursting with troubles. This was just one more entry in the list of his sins, which was already bigger than the Manhattan Yellow Pages.
“I should go,” Sam said, and Dean bolted upright. That was the last fucking thing Sam needed to do, because if he walked away now he was going to hate himself forever, Dean could see that tattooed across his face.
“No,” he repeated, rock solid this time, moving quick so that Sam would have to go through him to get to the door, and Sam wouldn’t want to do that wearing the amulet. He had a moment of wild speculation—what if Sam could just do him regularly, wear him out—and then he remembered how the guy from the other day had behaved and the fantasy shattered. Sam could fuck him until Dean didn’t know his own name and Dean would still be catnip for random strangers.
Sam smiled at him, weary and disbelieving, the way he’d smiled for a few years back when he was a kid and only angry at Dad, before he’d started getting mad at Dean too for following orders.
“Sam,” he said, wishing that he could get the owner’s manual for the kid’s brain. Most likely there were whole chapters on ‘don’t even bother trying to change his mind.’ “Just—give me a couple seconds here.”
He couldn’t finish a thought—always did better listening to his body, but his body was working for the enemy now. If Sam wanted—the last time he’d said no to Sam, he’d driven Sam straight into Ruby’s arms, too busy listening to angels to notice that Sam was the only one who’d ever put Dean first. Maybe this was just Dean talking himself into thinking that what he wanted would be right for Sam—but he knew that wasn’t true, not usually, and Sam had said he still felt the pull, even with the amulet on. Dean got it: even his fuzzy memories retained an awful lot of the pleasure, and Heaven knew (right down to the bone) that Winchesters didn’t get much in the way of pleasure out of existence.
Dean wasn’t strong enough to resist the promise of making them both happy any more than he’d been strong enough to stay on the rack in Hell. “If you—it’s cool. I need it, it feels good, and if you want to--” He looked up, trying to let his eyes talk for him.
Sam gaped at him. “It’s cool?” he repeated, most likely because he didn’t want to use any other words.
Dean shrugged. “It’s magic. Not like you have a choice, even ignoring how hot I am naturally.” He couldn’t figure out what he was feeling, not with the want rumbling through his body like he was going down a bad stretch of highway at a hundred miles an hour. Inspiration struck: “If you don’t, I’m gonna have to ask Bobby, and nobody wants that.”
Even in the middle of his obvious freakout, Sam was paying enough attention to wince in sympathy at the thought, but his lips were pressed stubbornly together.
Dean sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. Of course Sam was going to make him do the heavy lifting on this. “D’you want me to beg?”
Sam jerked back, inhaling sharply, and stumbled against the bedframe, wobbling until he sat down. Now Dean was the one looking down at him, Sam’s eyes wild and dark, flush high on his cheeks.
Dean couldn’t get more than a few feet away without starting to feel the burn from the amulet. But some of his best moves worked at a distance. He squatted until they were at eye level, keeping his eyes locked to Sam’s.
Sam swallowed, licked his lips—and if Sam thought that pulling fashion-model faces was somehow going to keep Dean from thinking this was a good idea, he was even crazier than he’d been when he’d let Lucifer out of his cage. “You don’t want this,” Sam breathed, and the roughness of his voice told Dean that he wanted to be convinced.
“Look at me.” Dean spread his arms, palms facing Sam, bouncing a little on the balls of his feet. “Still me, Sam. Got some new troubles now, but I’m the same guy. Your idea gets me off and keeps me from feeling like I’m on fire, and it’s not exactly like you’ll be suffering either. So why do you want me to be the one to say no?”
Sam’s mouth worked helplessly. He was probably thinking the really obvious things, realizing that even Dean had to be aware of them, and rejecting them as protests. Dean liked that, as long as the debate stayed in Sam’s head and he didn’t make Dean walk through the arguments with him. For someone who didn’t like running drills, Sam sure was willing to jawbone a lot of routine stuff.
Sam pushed his hands through his hair, nostrils flaring. Dean always thought he looked silly in that pose, like he was trying to keep his head from bulging outwards from the force of his gigantic brain, but right now all Dean could think about was Sam’s big hands, wrapped around his shoulders, shoving him back onto a bed, pressing his knee to his chest.
“I need a little time,” Sam said. Dean’s body twitched with disappointment, but it wasn’t no. And Dean got that this was all too much for anybody to handle—completely fucking par for the course for them, but not any easier because of that. He wouldn’t mind a pause to consider Sam’s revelations himself, if his brain ever got control back from his dick.
He nodded and moved out of the path between Sam and the door. “Promise me you’re not going anywhere, no matter what.” He figured he was entitled to that demand, pathetic as it was.
Sam looked like he’d been slapped, even though he’d been the one threatening to leave not five minutes back. “I promise,” was all he said, and then he was up the stairs and, Dean had to believe, angsting up a storm within the confines of Bobby’s property.
****
You can’t seriously be considering this, Sam told himself fifty times over the next few days. No matter what Dean said he wanted, he was speaking from desperation.
But wasn’t that reason to consider Dean’s suggestion? Jo wasn’t an option any more, and Dean’s reasons for avoiding civilians were far from crazy. Sam hated the idea of some random person taking advantage of Dean’s condition anyway. Unlike somebody else, Sam would remember that there was a person underneath the incubus glamor.
Right, because his reasons for wanting to fuck his brother were entirely noble and had nothing to do with how the incubus poison had made everything right for once in his life. Even when he’d been drinking Ruby’s blood, the thrill of the power had been accompanied by rage and a desperate conviction that the world owed him some payback. Arrogance wasn’t happiness, no matter how much Sam had tried to pretend. The magic drawing him to Dean had been a trick, but at the same time it had been completely real.
It didn’t help that he couldn’t imagine a more intense connection than the bond he shared with Dean, not these days. Before Dean had been infected, that hadn’t mattered. Sam had accepted that his most important relationship in his life was with Dean, and that, correspondingly, he was going to get laid, if at all, the same way Dean did: casually and sporadically, easier not to know much about the other person. But now, Dean was offering the whole package, and he knew for a fact that it didn’t disgust him. Incubus magic had carried him right through that foot-thick barrier like it had been made of frost.
He’d tried so hard to figure out right from wrong. It wasn’t so fucking easy, not with demon blood and prophecy and liars on all sides. All he knew was that every time he’d left Dean, voluntarily or involuntarily, he’d ended up worse off than he’d started, usually with innocents as casualties as well.
He wouldn’t risk that again. But if he abused Dean’s vulnerability now, then when Dean recovered he might not be able to trust Sam any more. He was already too close to believing that Sam would always put his own desires over Dean’s well-being.
Sam would have to be strong until they’d found a cure for Dean. Whatever it took, he’d do.
****
When Sam didn’t return to the panic room that night, Dean knew he’d lost his chance.
Sam was probably right. He couldn’t really want this, not once he’d thought about it, and he didn’t need more reminders of how fucked-up Dean was.
Disappointment was bitter in Dean’s mouth, but familiar.
He couldn’t stop wondering what it had been like with Sam. Even post-Hell when he’d been drinking most seriously, he’d never blacked out and missed an entire hookup.
Sam made himself even more scarce, researching different aspects of incubus lore. Dean kept on working in Bobby’s shop, forcing himself to move forward same as if he’d had a real injury. There was a low-level burn through his body now, like being packed full of coals. It was too bad they’d alienated every remaining hunter in the world except for Bobby and Jo (and the two of them weren’t all that thrilled with the Winchesters either, at this point). He entertained a fantasy about Ellen for a while, but imagination just cranked him a couple of degrees higher. Pretty soon he was going to have to think about hiring someone, except there was no way that an outsider would understand, and there were enough nasty surprises in a working girl’s life that he hated the thought of being another one.
He tried to stay active, at least when Sam was hovering within earshot, but he ended up spending a lot of time propped up on a bench, looking at his tools through half-closed eyes. He was pretty sure Sam was spying on him, but he wasn’t really up to stealth and turning the tables.
Pain could strip away everything else: dignity, morality, love. Turned out desire could work a lot like pain.
Dean was taking a nap—lying down, anyway—in the panic room when Sam came for him for the first time in days.
“Dean,” he said, and the raw need in his voice brought Dean to sitting so fast his head spun.
“Yeah, Sam,” voice rusted nearly through.
“You know it’s not because I want—I just want you to be okay.”
Dean snorted and shook his head, feeling like he was carrying the weight of a spare tire around on his neck. “Yeah, that’s not in the cards, so what’s your second choice?”
Sam closed his eyes. “If you still think you can—I will.”
Under the dull haze of hunger, Dean felt a throb of loss, because he hated that Sam thought he had to offer himself up like this. But Dean wanted him, too, helplessly and totally, even if it cost him Sam’s respect in the long term. There was no long term for him, anyway. “Oh, I can, Sam.”
Sam blinked, and Dean was relieved to see that his eyes were clear. This might be close to whoring himself out for Dean’s sake, but at least Sam was keeping it together.
Slowly, Sam reached for the amulet, closing his hand around the irregular lump of stone. Dean wasn’t sure he even knew he was doing it, yet. Dean clenched his jaw so that he wouldn’t say something that would spook Sam, even though the prospect of sweet relief was making him feel like ants were swarming over his skin. If Sam ended up saying no after this buildup, Dean swore, he was going to get seriously punched, burn or no burn.
Dean rubbed at his mouth, slow, and watched Sam’s eyes follow his fingers helplessly.
“You’re sure?” he asked, and it was all Dean could do to keep from pleading.
He nodded instead, and Sam pulled the cord over his head.
It was like it had been with Jo, and not. Maybe because he hadn’t been waiting quite as long, or maybe because he was getting used to it. He wasn’t remotely in charge or anything, but he was able to notice individual details this time: the way Sam’s skin glowed in the yellow light filtering in from above; the taste of him, strong and almost sour; the springiness and thickness of his hair, enough that Dean could nearly lose his hands in the heavy dark strands—he’d never admit this, but he kind of appreciated Sam’s refusal to get a real haircut, now that he knew how it felt to hang on and curl his fingers through Sam’s thick, shaggy hair.
****
Sam reached out and snagged the amulet from its place on the floor, shivering immediately from the sweat cooling on his body. He got off the mattress, because Dean wasn’t going to tell him that he was too close even if that meant Dean got burnt again, and stumbled into his clothes.
He’d thought he’d known what to expect because of what he’d already done. But Dean wasn’t an incubus. He was something betwixt and between, and instead of the easy logic of the succubus-prompted first time, the magic had been a torrent, filling his lungs and blanking his mind before he heard the amulet hit the floor. He’d fallen on Dean like a cougar taking down a wounded deer, and Dean had surged up against him with equal fervor, as ungoverned as Sam.
Dean wasn’t going to blame him for taking advantage. Dean couldn’t even stay mad about Lucifer. He never did get the point of saying ‘no.’
Sam’s stomach lurched, but even that couldn’t dissipate the fog of pleasure. He already knew that he’d be back as soon as he could convince himself he’d waited long enough.
Dean was staring up at the Devil’s Trap on the ceiling, hands resting loosely on his stomach, his expression content, almost dreamy.
“Was it—” There was no non-humiliating way to ask the question. “You’re going to be okay now, right? For a couple of days anyway.”
Dean sighed and levered himself until he was sitting. “Felt awesome, Sam. But you and I both know I’m not okay.”
Sam shook his head. “We might have to—I mean, Bobby’s not gonna be thrilled with this. But we can go somewhere else while I work on a solution—”
“Where are we gonna go?” Dean asked, deceptively light.
Sam shrugged. “Hunting cabin? There’s places where nobody else ever comes by.”
“I don’t want to live in a cage,” Dean said, picking at a loose thread on the rough blanket.
And that was going nowhere Sam was going to allow. “Listen to me. No matter what, we’re not going to give up. You’re not gonna—I won’t let you sacrifice yourself to protect other people.”
Dean grinned, rickety and uneven. “Not a worry, Sammy.” Sam tilted his head curiously. “I won’t—I can’t go back there a minute earlier than I have to.”
Sam was flummoxed. Dean couldn’t think he was still Hell-bound. No demon had a claim on him.
Dean could read his disbelief, and shrugged. “I’ve done plenty of other things God doesn’t seem to like much. Plus what I did when I—I don’t think what happens in Hell stays in Hell. Seems like the kind of stuff Heaven notices, you know?”
Sam had said the first thing that occurred to him. “But Dad—”
Dean looked away. “They never got to him,” he said with devastating conviction. “He—you saw the look on his face when he got out. Twice as long as me, and he didn’t. He wouldn’t. So anyway, yeah, no way am I checking out early. Don’t want to whammy anybody into fucking me, but I will if I have to.”
Dean had built a neat trap, no less powerful for its obviousness: Sam couldn’t explain how ridiculous Dean’s assumptions about his proper fate were without at the same time encouraging him to off himself. Sam knew he’d figure out how to approach the topic eventually, but right now he was routed, and they both knew it.
“I’m gonna stay down here a while,” Dean said. Sam wanted to touch him—not like that, just to reassure himself that his brother was still there, still breathing. But he couldn’t, so he took the dismissal for what it was and headed back upstairs to his useless books and his cold bed.
****
So now, on top of everything else, they were sneaking around Bobby’s like a pair of kids who’d just figured out what their dicks were for. Dean put it fifty-fifty at best whether Bobby had an idea of why Dean wasn’t so sickly any more, but there was no talking about it.
Whenever they were alone Sam would put his hand to the amulet, his way of asking whether Dean wanted him to take it off, and Dean nodded every single time. After, Sam didn’t say anything about how he felt about the sex, which was like a birthday gift until Dean remembered that caring-and-sharing Sam had disappeared somewhere right around the time Dean went to Hell. Dean wasn’t the type to think about what all this ‘meant’ for their relationship or whatever, but he did wonder sometimes what was going on in Sam’s enormous head.
He found himself half proud of Sam’s he-man habits and half embarrassed, neither of which he’d admit short of torture. Sam was a Viking in the sack, on the occasions they made it to the sack. Dean was plenty kinky himself—the only suggestions he’d ever turned down involved blood or bondage he couldn’t release on his own—but Sam seemed to think that each encounter had to be an Olympic trial. Lots of slamming against walls and hoisting into the air and honest-to-fuck growling. Bite marks and bruises and, yeah, okay, Dean looked at them sometimes, after, when he was alone. It felt good, being wanted like that, even if it was fake.
He knew if he said anything Sam would conclude that Dean was criticizing, which was not even close to true. Just, sex was fun and hot and all, but if this was anything like Sam was with girls, maybe Dean shouldn’t’ve ragged on him all those years for keeping it in his pants most of the time. Sam fucked seriously, and Dean found himself not that thrilled with the thought of Sam handing pieces of himself out like that all over the country.
Dean could never match what Sam had to give, even if he could scratch and suck hickeys so Sam’s skin looked the same as his, after.
Dying had taught Dean that Sam wasn’t ever going to get normal while he thought that Dean still needed saving, or even avenging. Dean needed to make sure that he was safe, truly safe, and then Sam would be able to move on. And sure, it was selfish of Dean to ask Sam to submit to the incubus glamor in the meantime, but he’d always be selfish when it came to Sam, holding on so tight that it only made Sam want to get further away in the end.
He had to find a permanent fix. Sam was twisting himself up for Dean again. Dean was grateful that this time they weren’t heading towards apocalypse, of course, but that wasn’t a huge consolation when he glanced over towards Sam and watched Sam jerk away, like he couldn’t stand Dean’s eyes on him.
****
“Come out here, Sam,” Bobby called, and Sam closed De Imaginibus and slotted it back into its place on Bobby’s shelf.
“I’ve got a friend in Maryland, name of David Kelty,” Bobby said as soon as Sam got through the doorway to the kitchen. Dean was nodding beside him: Sam was just now being filled in, which was annoying but not particularly suprising when it came to the two of them.
“You’ve got a phone book’s worth of friends,” Sam said, not quite as snidely as he would have said it to Dad (not that it would have been true for Dad). “What’s special about this one?”
“He thinks he can help Dean learn to control the incubus glamor.”
Sam felt a wash of pure relief, but it dissolved when he realized that Dean didn’t look nearly as happy. “It’s not gonna be easy, Sam. It’ll probably take a while.” Dean had his hands flat on the table in front of him, leaning forward. His eyes were gold-flecked in the light coming in through Bobby’s kitchen window. Sam wanted to grab him and take him upstairs.
“How long?” he asked.
Dean and Bobby exchanged glances. “Could be a year,” Bobby said. Dean swallowed and dipped his chin a fraction in acceptance. “Dean’s gonna go to his place in Maryland.”
“I’ll stay with you,” Sam said immediately, suppressing the desire to explain to Bobby just how unacceptable a lengthy separation was, given that Dean was his.
Dean shook his head, as did Bobby. “David was pretty specific, no outside presence,” Bobby said gently. “Truth be told, it’s already a long shot. If he says he needs Dean alone, Dean better go alone.”
Dean’s eyes were luminous in his too-pale face. He couldn’t take care of himself like this. Sam could fuck him, but not fix him, and Dean needed the latter a lot more than the former. None of his research was coming up with any endgame, and with the fragments of rationality remaining to him Sam recognized that their situation was not stable, no matter how good it felt in the moment. Sam couldn’t let his own fucked-up obsession get in the way of helping Dean. If this Kelty guy could do that, then they had to go along with his demands.
“How are we gonna get Dean there?” he asked.
Dean actually smiled. “This is pretty cool. Bobby figured out how to amp up that spell we use on the car.” The incantation had a long Greek name and a longer pedigree, but Sam had called it the Somebody-Else’s-Problem field since the moment he’d learned about it. It couldn’t make people ignore the car—that would invite total disaster in traffic—but it could make people incurious, or forgetful about the color, make and model.
That spell had doubtless saved their asses more than once, because a 1967 Impala in cherry condition—the only condition Dean would generally allow—was not exactly inconspicuous, and they tended to drive fast and leave the car parked in plain sight. The field’s worst failure had been when Bela had contrived to have the Impala towed; she must have used a very precise cantrip, because Sam hadn’t even needed to reset the spell once they’d retrieved the car.
If Bobby had increased the power of the spell to cover Dean’s glamor, then Dean would be as safe as he was going to get. Safer even than he was at Bobby’s, most likely.
Dean was almost bouncing on his feet. “Gonna have to piss in a bottle, but he figures I’ll be fine long as nobody gets too close.”
“Okay,” Sam said. “So when do we leave?”
****
Bobby sold the story just like he’d said he would, and Sam was nearly cheerful as they set out.
It was awesome to be back on the road, even for a short trip, even though Dean couldn’t get out for a shit or a shower or a shave. He still got the wind in his face, the thrum of his baby under and around him, and Sammy in the passenger seat, safe and sound. The heat of the amulet built up over time in an enclosed space, but it wasn’t close to incapacitating; after a day driving, he had nothing worse than a bad sunburn on his right side.
Bobby took care of calling ahead to Kelty and explaining what Sam expected to find. Kelty was cool with it, had even set up a room for Sam to see full of mystical soothing crap, supposedly to help Dean focus his energies. Dean wasn’t surprised. A guy like Kelty had to be used to telling people what they wanted to hear, and Bobby’s proposition had promised to make Kelty an awful lot of money.
The room was underground, heavily warded against outsiders. Nobody was getting in who wasn’t preapproved. Dean figured he’d throw out all the New Age stuff once Sam took off, and then there’d be space for a widescreen TV.
“You’re gonna be okay here?” Sam asked after he’d inspected every last crystal and hanging. Kelty, who turned out to be a short dark-haired guy Dean would have had trouble picking out of a lineup, had politely disappeared after showing them around his place.
“Why wouldn’t I be?” Dean slung his bag onto the bed and thought about opening up the tiny dresser. Small as it was, his clothes weren’t going to fill it, but the duffel was out of place and probably should go in the closet. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a closet worth using for something other than hiding shit from housekeeping. Probably Sam’s senior year of high school, back when they were still renting houses, except by then he’d left too much stuff behind during rushed departures to trust in closets. So maybe it was earlier than that.
Stupid to pay so much attention to a silly thing like a closet, anyway. Sam was just watching him, standing in the center of the room and making everything around him seem smaller.
“Dean,” he said. Dean took two steps and grabbed him, fiercely, ignoring the burn where the amulet immediately set his skin on fire. Sam hugged back just as painfully hard, until he remembered the amulet and tried to struggle free.
“’s okay,” Dean said, but Sam wouldn’t listen, pushing him away. This near, Sam didn’t have his usual advantage in reach and weight, but he was still strong as a horse and Dean was forced back, Sam’s hands tight on his shoulders, arms braced to keep Dean from coming closer.
“Dean,” Sam said again.
This was the last time he’d—No, bad idea to think that way. But he wanted to hold his brother, dammit.
Carefully, he put his hands around Sam’s wrists, keeping his touch gentle. He leaned his head forward, close as he could get without an immediately obvious burn. “Take it off.”
“No,” Sam said, twisting free. But that was just an opening gambit, Dean knew.
“Last chance, Sam.”
“We don’t—you shouldn’t need—if this guy knows what he’s doing--”
Dean rolled his eyes. “So maybe I want one last go, before he turns me into a monk.” He wished Sam wasn’t so hung up on rhyme and reason. How many people got to have freaky incubus-awesome sex without the bummer side effect of drained life energy? And here Sam was turning it down.
Or trying. He could see the uncertainty in Sam’s stance, swaying just a little. The crease between his eyes yelled out that Sam was fighting an inner war. Dean wanted to tell Sam to stop thinking and let Dean take care of him, but saying anything like that out loud would only trigger Sam’s jackass-stubborn side.
They’d already crossed that line. One more time wouldn’t hurt. “Sam,” he whispered, the word like the beat of his heart.
****
Sometimes Sam told himself that the incubus venom, or whatever it was stuck in Dean’s body, must be physically addictive. He already had a vulnerability for that kind of thing, and he’d never found a Demon Blood Drinkers Anonymous to teach him the right skills to resist a new dependence.
But Bobby’d kept pretty good track of Jo, and, careful to keep even a hint of concern away from Dean, he’d reported to Sam that Jo neither admitted to nor demonstrated any lingering side effects from her time with Dean. The girl from the motel was also continuing with her daily life and not wasting away, as far as the PI Sam hired could tell. So any addiction Sam had was psychological.
Story of his life, really.
Because it was good, synapse-meltingly good, every touch and thrust. The taste he’d had when Dean had been mostly unconscious was nothing like what happened when Dean was an active (not willing, no matter how hard that was to remember) participant. Even without the incubus glamor, Dean was an exquisitely physical animal; with the boost of magic, Sam worshiped him.
When Dean asked for the last time in Kelty’s shabby little basement apartment, Sam honestly tried—wanted—tried to want to say no. But he didn’t have the willpower.
What scared him most wasn’t the lack of control. It was that he couldn’t tell the difference any more between what he wanted when the amulet was on and what he wanted when it was off.
The air was chilly and a little damp, but as soon as Sam had tossed the necklace into the corner, the only discomfort he felt was the distance from Dean, and that was easily fixed.
His hands were clumsy, like they were actually swollen with the desire spilling out of his skin, tugging and tearing at Dean’s clothes as Dean reciprocated, Sam’s mouth already settled at the arc of Dean’s shoulder, too greedy even to wait for him to be naked. There was a brief and painful interlude when Sam wrestled Dean’s shirt over his head, and no way was Sam disengaging for that a second time, so he just batted Dean’s hands away from his own worn T-shirt, then returned to shoving Dean’s jeans off his hips, belt flapping uselessly around them.
Dean stumbled out of his boots and jeans as Sam pushed him back across the room, ending up at the low dresser that was just the right height. Dean groaned, charcoal-rough, as Sam bit along the line of his jaw, tasting salt and leather. Then Sam spun him around, Dean’s hands flying out to catch himself on the wood, his nose nearly smashing into its reflection in the mirror above the dresser. Sam barely recognized himself, wild-eyed over Dean’s shoulder, face flushed and hair already sticking to his forehead with sex sweat.
Sam opened his jeans one-handed, pushing Dean down with his other hand outspread on Dean’s back, Dean’s shoulders bunching as his head dropped and his ass thrust back, spreading his legs for Sam. Dean’s compliance made him crazy; he grabbed the back of Dean’s thigh and pushed until Dean’s knee was up on the dresser, Dean shakily balanced on the ball of his other foot. Sam spat in his hand, reached down to slick himself while he folded himself over Dean and mouthed at the back of his neck.
Dean was tighter than he had any right to be, blood-hot and almost painful, just the edge Sam needed. He’d never fucked anyone Dean’s size before, his hand barely able to cover the side of Dean’s face, and it was a thrill to be able to control Dean so easily, all that breadth and strength submitting as he groaned under Sam. Sam took a mouthful of Dean’s flesh and tugged at it with his teeth, just to hear Dean gasp.
When he looked up, he could see Dean’s face in the mirror, eyes green as fairy lights, glowing with ecstasy. Dean wanted this, wanted him to fuck in so hard the wood creaked under them and the mirror shivered in its frame. Dean’s fingers slipped across the surface of the dresser until he gave up and pressed his palms against their reflection, fighting just to avoid being slammed into the glass with Sam’s thrusts. He whined and Sam wrestled a hand around to fist his cock, hotter even than the rest of him, pulsing almost immediately with his orgasm, the shudder wracking his whole body.
Sam’s forehead pushed into the center of Dean’s back as he grabbed on to Dean’s hips and came with a choked-off groan.
His toes were numb.
Still vibrating with pleasure, he eased back. Dean made a small grumbling noise, but it didn’t sound like pain. Sectors of Sam’s brain were coming back online, far too quickly. He was just glad that he hadn’t said anything out loud, though there was very little that would have been more damning than what he’d done.
Damning, there was a word.
He couldn’t stop himself from running his fingers down the line of Dean’s spine. Then he tugged at his shorts and jeans until he was nearly decent. He didn’t want to move away, but he only had a couple of minutes before the glamor kicked in again, so he went and recovered the amulet, leaving Dean to get dressed.
Fully clothed again, Dean turned to him and opened his mouth, but something in Sam’s expression must have been too much even for Dean, who flicked his eyes away and rubbed at his chin where the stubble was threatening to become a beard after days on the road.
“Call me.” The words erupted from Sam before he knew he was going to say them. “Every day. At least.”
Dean’s lips twitched into a smile. “Really, Sam?”
He shook his head, willing Dean not to start in on the bullshit, because Sam was not a weepy teen and also he had plenty of good reasons to want to stay in constant contact with his brother. Dean’s expression softened as they stared at each other, until his lashes dipped and Sam knew he’d won.
“Might be pretty busy chanting and lighting candles, but I’ll see what I can do,” he said.
Sam hurt with not being able to reach out and hug him, squeeze him until Dean admitted that he didn’t want to split up either. “If I don’t hear from you, I’m coming right back here, and Bobby’s friend can just hang his crystals off of me while you work.”
Dean snorted. “Yeah, I bet you’d look awful pretty like that.”
“Big words for a guy who—” Sam began, intending to say something about just how many times Dean’s mouth had specifically been referenced by various rednecks angry at being hustled, then remembered himself and choked to a halt.
Dean’s mouth quirked, then settled on a smile that looked more like he’d just taken a punch. But Sam couldn’t apologize, because that would only make the problem worse. He swallowed. “Anyway. You call me, okay?”
Dean chewed on his lower lip for a second. “Sure, Sammy.”
Leaving was like breaking bones. But for once he was doing it for Dean’s own good, and that had to be enough.
Part 3
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Looking forward to more!
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Ow!
Even so, it amuses me that a sense of foreboding being built around the Winchesters fates can jerk laughter out of me. I think this fandom may have broken my brains a little.
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Re: Ow!
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From: (Anonymous)
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Why do I get a bad feeling about this treatment that's been proposed?
--Chase820
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Dean's thoughts about losing Sam's respect being the worst thing about Hell, and how Sam LOST that respect because Dean was "weak". Spot on, hon!
But first there’d be yelling and disappointment, and Sam didn’t know how he was going to handle the sadness in Dean’s eyes, the puzzlement over why Sam wasn’t a better person.
Yes, THIS!
According to Sam, that crazy doctor’s ghost had put a chunk of rage in Sam’s head and Sam had taken it out on the first person he saw. Honestly, Dean thought that was not nearly as true as Sam liked to believe, but he’d gotten over it a long time ago.
&hearts
Dean jerked, because that took them out onto open ocean, no land in sight.
Gorgeous image.
Sam could fuck him until Dean didn’t know his own name and Dean would still be catnip for random strangers.
Dean-as-catnip is a PERFECT description here.
And oh, Dean is so DEFEATED after the sex with Sam here. With the not really wanting to live in a cage, but at the same time so CONVINCED he's going back to Hell when he dies ... ::snuggles him::
It felt good, being wanted like that, even if it was fake.
This HURT. In a good way. :)
Dying had taught Dean that Sam wasn’t ever going to get normal while he thought that Dean still needed saving, or even avenging. Dean needed to make sure that he was safe, truly safe, and then Sam would be able to move on. And sure, it was selfish of Dean to ask Sam to submit to the incubus glamor in the meantime, but he’d always be selfish when it came to Sam, holding on so tight that it only made Sam want to get further away in the end.
He had to find a permanent fix. Sam was twisting himself up for Dean again. Dean was grateful that this time they weren’t heading towards apocalypse, of course, but that wasn’t a huge consolation when he glanced over towards Sam and watched Sam jerk away, like he couldn’t stand Dean’s eyes on him.
OMG, GORGEOUS!! And so TRUE!
And OMG to Dean getting rid of himself for Sam's sake. Why do I not have a good feeling about his plan ...
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Wonderful how well you portray them, how they're so twisted around each other, each thinking they're unworthy and trying to do the right thing by staying clear of the other.
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