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Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
Dean woke up long before he opened his eyes. He could tell, from the tender heat on his left side and the vibration around him, that he was in the car with Sam. So that much was awesome. But only that much.
He thought for a while about what he was going to say to his brother. His reckless, batshit, amazing brother.
“I know you’re awake, I could hear your breathing change,” Sam said, before Dean had figured out a plan of attack.
“Nothing’s different, Sam,” Dean said, opening his eyes but refusing to look over. Fuck, his mouth tasted like a garbage dump. He wanted a burger and a Coke almost as much as he wanted to be able to hit on the drive-through girl selling them.
Sam made an exasperated noise. Dean got his point. Being out of Henry’s clutches was a huge relief, and he probably should have started with a thank-you. But Sam wasn’t going to look the reality of Dean’s situation in the eye until someone tied him to a chair and wired his eyes open like in that one Kubrick film.
Sure enough: “We’re heading to an abandoned house. We’ll stay away from people.”
Dean thought about that for half a second. “Yeah, you can guarantee no one’s ever gonna come to the door? What if somebody’s car breaks down, they come to where we are with their fourteen-year-old daughter? Or worse. You know what the average age of puberty is, Sam? ‘Cause I looked it up. Average, means half of ‘em are younger.”
Sam shifted in the driver’s seat.
“What are you going to do?” Dean asked, and he felt just about worn through with exhaustion. “Gonna lock me up in your basement while you go to law school? Get Jo to move in so she can guard me while you’re not around?”
“You weren’t even trying!” Sam yelled, sounding about two inches away from totally losing it. Dean turned, and the sight of Sam washed over him like a warm shower even through the rest of the awfulness. “I thought you were—you gave up!”
“I’m still waiting to hear your genius idea,” Dean pointed out.
“We’re going to Flint. There’s an abandoned neighborhood, nobody comes through but the houses are still there. That’s where I’ll do the research.”
Dean crossed his arms over his chest and kicked his foot up on the dash. Shit, he wasn’t even wearing shoes. That fucker Parker had a lot to answer for. The only reason Dean wasn’t rejoicing at the thought that the guy was dead was that nobody, nobody deserved what was happening to him downstairs. “Not an answer, Sam.”
“It’s the only one you’re getting,” Sam said darkly. “And if you shut the fuck up I’ll let you drive.”
Dean didn’t know how he was supposed to feel. What Sam and Bobby had rescued him from had been unbearable, sure enough. And Sam, seeing him—it was like sun after years in the dark. But he didn’t think he could handle being locked up forever, trapping Sam with him to boot.
“Just—you have to give me a chance. You didn’t even—it hasn’t even been a year.”
Maybe it was Sam’s voice, frayed and fragile, or maybe it was how he made Dean think about his deal and the long twelve months between bargain and collection. Dean cleared his throat. “Okay. Okay, Sam.”
****
The place in Flint was just as promised, not even squatters for blocks around them. Sam drove half a mile every Tuesday night to leave their trash on a different part of the grid so that the garbage truck wouldn’t stop in front of their house.
Dean grumbled, but he was safe for the moment. Sam had threatened him with a geas if he didn’t swear that he wouldn’t get the Colt from Bobby, and he’d agreed. Sam thought he expected Sam to accept, eventually, that being locked in a house with only Sam for company, surrounded by every anti-personnel ward they could think of, was no kind of life.
Sam would accept that when he was dead. Maybe.
Dean wouldn’t let up on the subject, making sure Sam knew how miserable he was, and how dangerous he was. What if the house burns down, Sam? Wards won’t do shit then. You know I’m a valuable commodity now, Sam. You think Henry Parker was the only one with that particular bright idea? You gonna kill everyone who knows about me? Sam had shut that one down pretty fast by asking, ‘You gonna let me?’ Dean wasn’t freaked out so much by the question, Sam thought, as the fact that he really had to think about the answer before shaking his head.
When September came and school was supposed to start, Sam expected, there would be another massive showdown, but he had a couple of months before that blowout.
Every couple of days, Sam took off the amulet and went to Dean’s room.
The pathetic thing was, Sam could have been deliriously happy if Dean hadn’t been so set on his worst-case scenarios. Sure, Sam knew that they couldn’t stay like this forever. But a couple of weeks to remember each other, that was all he was asking. Then again, Dean didn’t really want to be as close to Sam as the reverse, so even that part of it wasn’t great for Dean. It was just so hard to remember, when Dean sighed and arched his neck and opened his mouth, when he put his perfect lips on Sam, that it wasn’t because he felt the same things as Sam did.
****
Dean looked over at the clock. “We could go again. If you wanted,” he offered.
Sam froze behind him, and Dean suppressed a sigh; looked like he’d fucked up again. Nobody ever called Dean well socialized. But, crap, he’d missed having this, the certainty of being known under the heat of the glamor. And he’d thought maybe Sam hadn’t yet grown tired of having Dean blocking any chance he had of a real life. Before Sam’s devotion soured into resentment, before Sam learned to regret his stubborn insistence on keeping Dean around, Dean wanted as much of Sam as Sam would give him.
“Why would you—I mean, are you, do you need more?”
Dean was glad he didn’t have to see the confusion on Sam’s face. “Nah. Don’t sweat it.”
“You don’t—” He could feel Sam fumbling for words. Sensitive, the boy was always too sensitive for his own good. Like maybe Dean was supposed to hate the sex now, even though the magic was making sure that it was just as hot as always, plus it was Sam.
“I’m fine, Sammy,” he said, letting the aggravation color his tone so Sam would know he was serious. “It’s just, it’s not like we’ve got to get up early next morning, and it feels good, so.” He felt like an asshole, because what was a reprieve for him was a distraction for Sam, but he just—the alternative was not wanting anything, the way he’d been when Dad died, and if Sam wasn’t going to let him kill himself then Dean was going to ask for a little consideration, that was all.
Sam was silent, long enough that Dean could feel the glamor prickling over his skin again. If he didn’t get a move on, Sam was going to lose the chance to say no.
“Yeah,” Sam said, his voice already rough with readiness to start the next round. “Yeah, okay.”
Afterwards, Sam put the amulet on, then whined when Dean tried to put a pillow wall between them so he wouldn’t get the shit burnt out of him in the middle of the night when Sam, inevitably, tried to colonize Dean’s side of the bed.
Fifteen minutes of shoving and grumbling later, he was about ready to kick Sam out, when he remembered. “Hey,” he said, grabbing Sam’s wrists, “wrap the goddamn thing in silk, all right?”
After that it was all fine.
****
“Maybe if we put you in front of one, it’d be able to tell what happened,” Sam wheedled, as patient as he knew how to be.
“Haven’t we spent enough time being laughed at by demons?” Dean rejoined. Sam didn’t disagree, but the discomfort was worth what they might learn.
In the end, Sam just set it up. He didn’t mention that he’d done the ritual before, so Dean double-checked all Sam’s work. That meant Dean walking over the Devil’s Trap again and again. Sam wasn’t sure who that was meant to reassure, but he hoped Dean took some comfort in the confirmation of his continued non-demonic status. At a different point in his life, Sam might have wanted to share the corruption of blood with Dean. Now he only watched Dean’s shoulders relax a fraction the fifth time he crossed over the painted lines and settled himself on the opposite side of the room.
This time Sam called up an incubus. A male might have different insights, and Dean, with all his fucked-up near-chivalry, was less likely to feel an unwarranted sympathy.
The demon arrived yelling. Sam sloshed an arc of holy water at it to get its attention. It turned to him, beautiful face stretched from hissing.
“Two choices,” Sam said. “First, you hold out on me and I’ll kill you slow. Second, you tell me what I need to know and I’ll make sure you’re fed better than you dreamed was possible.”
“Sam!” Dean squawked. Sam shook his head and kept his eyes on the demon, who was hunching itself to make a smaller target while looking him up and down. Sam wasn’t a hundred percent sure what his demonic reputation was these days, but pretty much any human in the know would have believed both halves of that offer.
The incubus, he noticed, was only a couple of inches shorter than Sam, and muscled like a Bowflex model. Squarish hero’s face, curly brown hair, skin that somehow managed to be both taut and dewy, inviting every kind of touch, like maybe if you licked at it enough you’d get to the candy filling. This wasn’t a possessed body, Sam knew. He wondered what the incubus had looked like in life. Whether, if Dean hadn’t featured so heavily in everyone’s End Times plans, Dean too would have been selected for the special treatment that had produced this demon.
Sam took a deep breath. “Tick tock,” he warned.
The incubus licked its lips, slow and sensuous. “What do you need to know?” The words sounded pornographic in its mouth.
Sam wondered whether his near-addiction to Dean was making him more vulnerable even with the protective amulet, then pushed the fear out of his mind. “What happened to my brother, and how do I fix it?”
The incubus turned, catlike, and examined Dean with the same intensity. Its eyes widened. “Abomination,” he said, and Dean flinched.
“That’s rich, coming from you,” Sam snapped.
The incubus shook its head. “I know what I am. I even know what you are, half-breed. But that--not demon, not angel.” It shuddered. “I think I might be sick.”
“How do I get the incubus out of him?” Sam demanded.
It tilted its head, a cat toying with its prey. Sam clenched his fist. Black blood started dripping from the thing’s nose as it bent over in pain. Sam could feel the pressure building in his head, along with Dean’s nearly-as-powerful hatred for Sam’s powers, which Dean didn’t need a lick of telepathy to convey.
“You’ll never get it out!” the incubus spat, muffled by the blood. “He’ll burn, you’ll burn, you’ll all—”
Sam bent his head and focused, imagined invisible claws extending from his hands all the way through the circle, ripping the incubus to pieces. It died quickly, no possessed body to sustain it, and Sam staggered back.
He heard Dean shuffle towards him, pause a few feet away, then continue on. The hesitation was enough to remind him that he needed to stand on his own, and he straightened, bringing his hand away from his temple (not as if his fingers could unknot the mess of snakes in his head, writhing and biting). He edged away from Dean, far enough that Dean shouldn’t be feeling the amulet.
“I’m fine,” he said, which was mostly true. “It wasn’t possessing a human, so—”
Dean cast an impatient glance at the corpse, which was already starting to look a little gelatinous around the edges. “Yeah, you look just awesome. Not like your head’s about to fall off or anything.”
“No,” Sam insisted, wanting Dean to understand. “With an exorcism, it’s like the demon is threaded through the body. Pulling it out is like weeding—you have to yank really hard to get out the roots. This wasn’t the same at all—” He stopped. “What if I could do it to you?”
“Hunh?” Dean stepped closer. Sam watched carefully but didn’t see the little signs that Dean was in pain, so he allowed it.
“I could pull it out of you,” he said, believing it as the words came to him. “It’s not exactly an exorcism because you’re not possessed, but that incubus wasn’t possessed either and I did fine—”
Dean’s face contorted. Faster than Sam could back away, he got in Sam’s face and shoved him, hard. “You are not fucking fine! Your eye’s full of blood and I know you’re hurting.”
Sam rocked back on his feet and squinted, realizing why he felt like he’d been punched. “Dean,” he said, and stopped, because pointing out that, as Winchester injuries went, this was maybe half a level above a hangnail was not going to be convincing, no matter how true it was. “You said you don’t want to live like this.” Dangerous, because if Sam failed then Dean got another two-by-four in his arsenal of arguments, but worth the risk. This would work, he could feel it.
“And you said you didn’t have the juice left to do anything major. How many demons’d we need to bleed before you got enough gas in the tank?”
Sam frowned. He’d drink a river of blood to save Dean, and he didn’t think he was making up excuses to get back the rush of power. But he’d lied to himself about that kind of thing before. “Ruby said—” he faltered under the weight of Dean’s hatred; he knew the look of rage, fear and contempt wasn’t directed at him, but the knowledge wasn’t comforting, because Dean would have been justified in blaming him as well. “She said that part wasn’t necessary. I think that was about corrupting me. The rest of it, that’s just me. You have to let me try.” His voice cracked, because Dean kept talking about dying, again, killing his soul so there’d be no going back, and Sam just couldn’t handle it any more.
Dean’s hands twitched by his sides, like he wanted to wipe the tears rolling down Sam’s cheeks. He looked away and his shoulders dropped. “You stroke out on me and I swear I’ll bust you out and beat you back into grade school.”
Sam nodded vigorously. “Tomorrow,” he said, because even he understood that Dean wouldn’t let him try right now.
****
Sam grunted his frustration for the tenth or the ninetieth time. “I can’t—with a possession, I can sense the demon,” he explained, finally noticing Dean’s raised eyebrows. “But I can’t—I don’t feel anything different about you. I can’t grab on to what I can’t feel.”
Dean guessed that made sense. “Is it the amulet?” The psychic had said pretty much the same thing, he remembered, and mentioned the amulet as a possible cause.
Sam nodded, following his thoughts. “So, then—”
“Take it off, then move fast after?”
As ideas went, it was far from their worst, and maybe not bad even if you weren’t grading on the Winchester curve. So they ended up slumped together on the bed, Sam’s leg thrown over Dean’s hip as he curled himself around Dean. Dean twisted himself around so that he could see Sam’s face and stop him if he got back into nosebleed territory. Sam put his palm on Dean’s chest, fingers covering big chunks of the tattoo, and took a deep breath as he closed his eyes.
Dean wondered, a little, whether he’d see black if he lifted Sam’s eyelids.
Then the pain hit. Sam had said exorcism was like weeding, a foreign invader pulled out of a body, but this felt more like Sam was pulling out his circulatory system, veins and arteries and capillaries all twisting and tearing as they were ripped loose. He tried not to scream, he tried harder than he’d struggled for his first five years in Hell, but the pain just kept ratcheting up, like every cell in his body was exploding in agony.
The buzz of the incubus glamor setting in again was the sweetest relief since Alastair got him down off the rack.
Sam was frantic this time, and Dean was more out of it than usual, so he was grateful when Sam hauled him into his lap, letting Dean loll his head back onto Sam’s shoulder as Sam thrust up and dug his fingers into Dean’s sides, warm and slippery. Sam was gasping words like ‘anything’ and ‘always,’ and Dean pressed himself against Sam’s skin, their legs locked together.
After, Sam hotfooted off the bed and stumbled back into his shorts. Dean was content where he was, staring at the flaking paint on the ceiling. He should touch that up, he decided. Maybe tomorrow.
“I’m sorry,” Sam said once his breathing had slowed. He sounded defeated. “Once I started looking, I could feel it, but. It’s wrapped around you—around that mark on your shoulder—like a fucking oak tree.”
Aside from everything else, Dean didn’t much like the way Sam still talked about Castiel’s handprint, like it was some kind of mutilation. Maybe Dean hadn’t wanted to lose his scars, maybe he hadn’t wanted to be Heaven’s butt-boy, but Castiel had been a hero at the end and (as usual) he just wished Sam would show a little more respect. “You still don’t get to drink demon blood,” Dean reminded him.
“I know that!” Sam snapped. “I thought—it isn’t the same as it was with real demons. It’s not just strength I need, it’s finesse. If I had a couple of hours to work at it—”
Dean shuddered at the thought of hours of what he’d just been through. But, not going to happen, so he put it out of his mind. He didn’t feel too bad, not really. He hadn’t let himself expect that Sam’s idea would work, and there was a certain relief in not having allowed any hopes to form.
****
Sam had become inured to botched jobs over the past few years, so he only moped for a day or so before starting to work again. He could never push the failure completely out of his mind. He was almost strong enough to save Dean, but not quite, and he honestly wasn’t sure whether it was worse to be a complete loser.
He tried not to fight with Dean about the wasted time with Kelty, but it was difficult, especially since Dean had ended up a sex slave and still wouldn’t admit that leaving Sam had been a bad idea.
Sam had spent a fruitless day of searching for a way to compress time so that he could do in two minutes what would ordinarily take two hours. Dean had been working on the tiles, so when Sam started their usual fight about Dean’s lies they were in the kitchen. “I didn’t do it for the money,” Dean said, out of nowhere.
Sam gaped, anger pushed aside by surprise.
Dean apparently took his silence as disbelief, turning his attention to the dishes stacked by the sink. “I didn’t turn the money down, but they paid so I knew they wanted it, okay?”
The thought of Dean putting a price on himself when he should have been Sam’s was infuriating, yes, but Sam had dealt with that by ignoring it. “Dean,” Sam found his voice, “I never thought any different.”
“Then why do you keep asking about it?” Dean practically yelled.
Because I want to know if I was better than them, Sam thought immediately and winced. Dean threw up his hands and turned away, heading for the door. Sam’s heart pounded and his stomach clenched. Whatever was going on in Dean’s head, it was a fair bet Sam had just made it worse. “Wait,” he said, and Dean froze, hand on the doorframe. “I just—I know you had to do a lot of things you didn’t want to.”
“What else is new?” Dean muttered, which Sam wasn’t going to let distract him. Except—
“Dean?” he asked, hearing the dread in his own shaking voice.
“Never mind, Sam.” Dean’s voice was his fake-Dad voice, the tone evoking orders Sam hadn’t followed in years.
Sam visualized the box of money from Bobby’s attic, the banded stacks crisp and clean despite their origins. Dean had been so casual about the whole thing, lying to Sam easily. So convincing, just like he’d explained their way of life when Sam was a kid, how Dad was really good at parting fools and major corporations from their money. Except that there had been a point when his and Dean’s standard of living had improved noticeably (noticeably for them, at least). There’d been new shoes and lunch money, clothes that didn’t scream Salvation Army so that Sam was now the smart new freak instead of the near-homeless new freak, Dean’s first brand-new gun. That last one, Sam remembered distinctly: Dean had shown Dad, so proud of his ability to contribute to the family business. Dad had praised Dean’s eye for quality, but he’d immediately warned Dean that he had to be careful—money’s not so easy to come by, son—and Dean had ducked his head and said yessir, and after that he’d been careful to hide his upgrades from Dad.
Dean had been barely fifteen.
Saliva flooded Sam’s mouth. He swallowed deliberately, forcing himself still, because if he threw up now he’d never convince Dean that it was anything but disgust for Dean’s choices, for Dean himself.
Dean was still standing in the doorway, back to Sam. He sighed and rubbed the back of his neck, shoulders bunched as he prepared to walk away.
“You did what you had to do,” Sam rushed out.
Dean turned back, uncertain. “Yeah, I did.” Aggressive, like he expected Sam to argue, which Sam wanted to do—Dean did what he thought he had to, not the same thing, except that Sam couldn’t figure out how to say that without accusing Dean of being stupid, which wasn’t what he meant at all. His head was buzzing with the desire to resurrect everyone who’d ever hurt Dean and set a new standard for Hell’s torturers.
If he told Dean that he shouldn’t ever have had to make those choices, Dean wouldn’t get it. He’d think that Sam was complaining about their pathetic fucked-up lives instead of talking about the person Dean was. In Dean’s cosmology, evil existed; people took advantage; Winchesters sucked it up. Sam couldn’t say he was sorry (entirely inadequate, and missing the point) and he couldn’t say he understood (Dean would never want him to).
He breathed out, ragged. He needed to focus on what Dean was going through now, regardless of the underlying structural damage. “I’ll never agree with your choice, but that’s over with. And if there’s anything you want to talk about, I want you to know that I—it’s okay to be angry at them.” It’s okay to be angry at me, he meant, but couldn’t quite get there.
Dean sighed. “It was fucking, Sam. Okay, sometimes freaky fucking, but compared to the rest of my life, that ranks about up there with running out of gas on the highway.”
Sam was almost grateful to be able to fight about this, so he wouldn’t have to review a decade of Dean’s caretaking, looking for evidence he’d ignored before. “Yeah? Those scars on your back say otherwise.” Dean hadn’t said anything, but Sam wasn’t blind. Apparently sadists liked kinky incubus sex too. Sam couldn’t even imagine what it would be like for Dean to suddenly want to get hurt, just because someone else wanted to hurt him. The way he suddenly wanted Sam every time the amulet came off.
Dean bowed his head, exposing the nape of his neck. “I handled that,” he said, and oh there was a story behind that sentence, but Sam wasn’t sure he could deal with it right now.
“Does it feel real?” he asked. “When they want—wanted something you wouldn’t. You wouldn’t ordinarily want, I mean.” He didn’t even know what he wanted to hear, couldn’t imagine a comforting lie or a useful truth.
Dean stared at him, honestly—as far as Sam could tell—puzzled. “There isn’t much realer than a hard-on.”
Maybe that was enough of an answer. Sam had seen enough of Dean’s pre-incubus conquests that he should have known better than to think that Dean would equate sex with feeling.
****
Dean worked in the house, painting, fixing the stairs, picking up some plumbing as he went. He rewired all three stories—the electricity hadn’t been touched since the house was built sometime before World War II, and though Sam didn’t believe him he thought they’d been more at risk of dying in an electrical fire than anything else that might have gotten them, especially with him stealing from the grid. So that felt good, despite the fact that he couldn’t go outside and even worried some about being visible through the front windows. Sam had chosen the location well, though, and days would pass when not a single car came down their street, so he tried not to get nervous.
Sam wouldn’t let him touch any actual spellworks or magical artifacts, and probably thought he was being subtle about it. Whatever, it left Dean time to read, which was kind of nice. He worked his way through David Foster Wallace, Ernest Hemingway, Hunter Thompson, some others. He’d give Sam the names and Sam would retrieve the books.
Dean liked reading books by guys who’d made their marks on the world and then made their own decisions on how to go. Sure, Dean hadn’t written any books, and almost nobody knew how he’d helped save the world, but there was Sam, and Dean figured Sam was as good a memorial as any ten masterpieces. Sam, for all his brains, didn’t notice any particular pattern in his choices, which was one less screaming fight they had to have.
After a while, he started having conversations with Sam again, like they’d had on the phone, just shooting the shit. They argued about whether vampires were alive—“It’s the definition, Sam—something’s alive if you can kill it!”—and whether any good music had been recorded in the present century. They debated Thelma and Louise versus Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Dean always went for Thelma and especially Louise. It was the car that tipped the balance.
****
Dean was concentrating on the diagrams and photos spread out in front of him. Sam inspected him carefully. He looked good. The weight and muscle he’d lost during captivity was returning, and their nightly sessions seemed to be making him even sleeker and prettier than he’d been before he’d been cursed, like there was part of him that did feed like an incubus now. Or maybe he’d always been that way, and Sam hadn’t noticed.
Sam was beginning to hope that his own presence would be enough to deter Dean from the idea of suicide. After Sam spent a horrific hour graphically describing the state of Dean’s post-Hellhound body, Dean became very careful not to do more than hint at how the world would be better off without him.
The cursed house Dean was working on now was one of Bobby’s research projects. Honestly, now that Dean had fixed anything in their squat that looked like it had even considered breaking, it would have been more effective to employ Dean building things, like more EMF detectors. But given enough tools, Dean might well build himself a Colt of his own, or an equivalent—there were plenty of ways to deliver a killing blow without bullets, and Sam didn’t understand enough of the mystical theory to know when a projectile was even required. Ruby’s knife had worked awfully well. So it was probably smarter to make Dean hit the books instead.
Dean glanced up to make sure Sam was paying attention. “The curse is probably written on one of the walls of the house, maybe behind a mirror or something where nobody’d know to find it. There’s a cleansing ritual to untangle the curse from the people once you find it, but the ritual is pretty complicated. Might be smarter just to burn the whole house down.”
Sam nodded. Except that the family might not think they’d been saved from all that much if they had to destroy everything they owned to preserve their lives. “If fire works, why don’t we find the thing and cut it out of the wall, then just burn that part?”
Dean tilted his head, considering. “I don’t know. Maybe. There’s something here about the curse being woven into the bones of the house.”
Woven into the bones. Sam frowned. “You think it might migrate if we burn the curse but don’t do the ritual?”
Dean shrugged. “First time we’ve seen this type of magic used to curse a family. Safer to burn the whole thing.” Dean was all about safety these days, because he couldn’t come along with Sam. He’d made it clear that he would have preferred it if Sam didn’t mess with the supernatural at all, but hunting was Sam’s payment to Bobby for helping them find this place and putting Sam in touch with the right locals while Sam tried to figure out what he was going to do.
Woven into the bones. Like Dean’s incubus, woven into the marks Castiel had left on him.
Cut the wall out and just burn that.
“I’m a moron,” Sam said.
Dean hitched a laugh. “Don’t be so hard on yourself, Sam. Just because you’re not as good a hunter as me—”
“We don’t need to get rid of the incubus,” Sam said, believing it as he said it. “We need to get rid of the angel.”
“What?”
Sam turned away from the table and headed towards his computer, already making a mental list of the books they hadn’t touched since the final battle with Lilith, books of angels and visitations.
****
Dean couldn’t let himself trust Sam’s crazy theory, not even after Sam swore forwards and backwards that the ritual he’d invented had to work, not even after Bobby agreed that it was worth trying. He remembered Sam’s confidence that he could break Dean’s deal, his certainty that he could gank Lilith and stop Lucifer’s rise. Dean wasn’t mean enough to say all that to Sammy, and the situation did seem a bit different now, accident instead of deliberate malice aimed at playing the Winchesters. But hope was more painful than flaying, and Dean had considerable experience with both from which to make that call.
Here was the hard part to admit: if he got cured, he was going to have to figure out how the fuck to live without Sam. But the alternatives were all terrible—he had to admit, even if he did manage to off himself and stay out of Hell, Sam would never be the same, and Dean couldn’t leave him behind like that. Sam had to be sure that he’d done everything he could, just like he’d taken care of Dean since this incubus thing started.
This time at least he wasn’t going to ask Sam for one last pity fuck. Sam had given him more than enough.
****
Dean stood, chest bare, staring at the handprint the way he never did any more. His hand twitched as if he wanted to touch it, but he met Sam’s eyes in the mirror and didn’t move.
“It’s okay to miss him,” Sam said. Sam didn’t, not really, but as bad as that time had been for them Dean didn’t have the same burden of shame every time he recalled what had happened, so he guessed it was easier for Dean to have a couple of warm fuzzy feelings about Castiel.
Dean’s lashes lowered. Sam guessed what he might have said--he pulled me out of Hell; he believed in me when nobody else did, not even you; he died for me--but he stayed silent, so Sam didn’t get to agree. “He wouldn’t want you to keep it, not when it’s doing this to you,” Sam said instead, and that was true too.
Dean snorted and shook his head. “Should’ve known,” he said, casual like he was when he was about to say something too important to be serious about. “’Course anything that touches me’d go to shit eventually.”
“Dean,” Sam said, heart squeezing in his chest, because Dean would find a way for this to be about his own corruption instead of being the target of evil. He wanted to grab on to Dean and squeeze until Dean understood that he was the most precious thing in the universe. Sam would do just that, he swore, as soon as he’d eradicated the incubus from Dean’s body.
“Let’s do this thing,” Dean said.
****
Dean considered that he’d been awesomely reasonable about complying with Sam’s ginned-up ritual. He’d painted the cross on his forehead even though it felt like putting on makeup, what with the holy mud Sam had given him (seriously, holy mud—Sam had blah-blahed his way through an explanation, but Dean had tuned it out). And then he’d painted another cross on his chest. Amazingly, the ritual didn’t require a third cross on his dick, even though that was basically the target.
He wiped his fingers on his jeans, gray and gritty smears. Sam grimaced reflexively and Dean gave him an eyebrow saying roughly that Sam hadn’t provided any tissues so what the fuck; Sam tilted his head, acknowledging the point.
“This is really important,” Sam said, using his Dean-I’m-super-not-kidding-this-time, no-you-really-have-to-know-this voice. “You have to enter into the ritual with a spirit of willingness.”
“The fuck does that mean?” Dean asked, still perfectly calm.
Sam made little flappy motions with his hands. “You know, be open. To whatever.”
“The whole reason we’re doin’ this is ‘cause of how open I am to whatever,” Dean said automatically, and regretted it when Sam flinched. He sighed. “Give me a clue, Sammy.”
“Just—we’re asking for aid. This isn’t about deals. It isn’t even about deserving anything, because that’s not how it works. If help comes, you have to accept it.”
Dean almost smiled at that, because Sam had him pegged right. Left to himself, he wouldn’t let himself trust offered help. He figured he had good reason. Look at what Heaven had demanded in return last time. But he could open himself, he guessed, like he had back when he was talking to Sam through the Ouija board.
And sure enough, when he nodded, Sam sank into the same cross-legged position on the floor. Dean imitated him, far enough away that he wasn’t feeling any heat from the amulet. He made himself relax, working on his breathing until his heartbeat slowed and he was loose and ready.
Sam’s voice, speaking words Dean didn’t know, was like the sound of the Impala’s engine running smooth. Dean trusted him with everything.
Still, he jerked a little when the crosses started to heat up, the mud liquefying again and dripping down his chest and his forehead, drops hanging on his lashes until he blinked them away. Sam sped up, his voice high and strained, and Dean wanted to shout out loud how proud of Sam he was.
Castiel’s handprint started to tingle, like being gripped again. Dean remembered how he’d been at the end, frightened only of losing, joyful in his certainty that his death had meaning. Dean’s tears had fallen onto his face, streaking trails through the grime and blood of the last battle, and Cas had raised two fingers like he was going to deliver one of his knockout specials. But instead he’d tapped Dean’s lips, pressing in a little too hard, like he couldn’t quite control his fingers any more. “Be of good cheer,” he’d said, and right now Dean knew that Sam was right: Castiel wouldn’t want to keep Dean trapped like this.
Dean didn’t pray, but he closed his eyes and remembered Castiel’s grace, unfurling huge and clean over them, so beautiful that even the demons had stopped fighting and known awe.
Sam was punching the words out like bullets, and Dean felt something tear loose inside him.
Invisible doctors were trying to restart his heart, and not being careful with the voltage. He arched up, his arms flying out reflexively. It was better than the best orgasm he’d ever had, and it was like dying, and it was like breaking apart—he imagined doves, exploding out of him in a pulse of white feathers. Behind that there was something else, cobweb-sticky, fragmenting into dust before he had time to really feel it.
He faceplanted practically in Sam’s lap, his arms still twitching and his fingers jittering out an extra rhythm on the floor. His heart was keeping a techno beat and he couldn’t feel his legs.
“Dean!” Sam grabbed at his head, trying to lift it, and then Sam must’ve remembered the amulet, because he backed off and Dean’s nose met none-too-clean carpet. That was enough pain to shock him back into control, and he pushed himself up a couple of inches, enough to lift his head and grin weakly at Sam.
“The handprint’s still there,” Sam said, swallowing, his frown lines already deepening.
Dean bit his lower lip and managed to wobble into a kneeling position, so close to Sam that he should have been feeling the burn. “I don’t think it’s the scar that matters,” he said, and put his hand out to close around the amulet. “You did it, Sam.”
Sam looked down at Dean’s hand, fingers curled so that they brushed his chest, and stopped breathing for long enough that Dean started to worry.
Then he grabbed Dean’s hand and together they pried the cord off of his neck. Dean tossed it into a corner and Sam knelt up, reaching out like he was going to grab Dean’s head with both hands and—
But that was just habit, conditioning from what always happened when Sam took off the amulet. Dean felt his skin heat, purely natural, and swayed backwards, getting back some of the distance he hadn’t noticed himself closing.
Sam looked down, blushing too. “You did it,” Dean repeated, doing his best to get them past the moment.
“Holy shit,” Sam said, raising his head. “Dean—”
“Yeah,” Dean said back, and grinned like a pirate king.
After that there was some hugging, and maybe a couple of manly tears.
Part Seven
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
Dean woke up long before he opened his eyes. He could tell, from the tender heat on his left side and the vibration around him, that he was in the car with Sam. So that much was awesome. But only that much.
He thought for a while about what he was going to say to his brother. His reckless, batshit, amazing brother.
“I know you’re awake, I could hear your breathing change,” Sam said, before Dean had figured out a plan of attack.
“Nothing’s different, Sam,” Dean said, opening his eyes but refusing to look over. Fuck, his mouth tasted like a garbage dump. He wanted a burger and a Coke almost as much as he wanted to be able to hit on the drive-through girl selling them.
Sam made an exasperated noise. Dean got his point. Being out of Henry’s clutches was a huge relief, and he probably should have started with a thank-you. But Sam wasn’t going to look the reality of Dean’s situation in the eye until someone tied him to a chair and wired his eyes open like in that one Kubrick film.
Sure enough: “We’re heading to an abandoned house. We’ll stay away from people.”
Dean thought about that for half a second. “Yeah, you can guarantee no one’s ever gonna come to the door? What if somebody’s car breaks down, they come to where we are with their fourteen-year-old daughter? Or worse. You know what the average age of puberty is, Sam? ‘Cause I looked it up. Average, means half of ‘em are younger.”
Sam shifted in the driver’s seat.
“What are you going to do?” Dean asked, and he felt just about worn through with exhaustion. “Gonna lock me up in your basement while you go to law school? Get Jo to move in so she can guard me while you’re not around?”
“You weren’t even trying!” Sam yelled, sounding about two inches away from totally losing it. Dean turned, and the sight of Sam washed over him like a warm shower even through the rest of the awfulness. “I thought you were—you gave up!”
“I’m still waiting to hear your genius idea,” Dean pointed out.
“We’re going to Flint. There’s an abandoned neighborhood, nobody comes through but the houses are still there. That’s where I’ll do the research.”
Dean crossed his arms over his chest and kicked his foot up on the dash. Shit, he wasn’t even wearing shoes. That fucker Parker had a lot to answer for. The only reason Dean wasn’t rejoicing at the thought that the guy was dead was that nobody, nobody deserved what was happening to him downstairs. “Not an answer, Sam.”
“It’s the only one you’re getting,” Sam said darkly. “And if you shut the fuck up I’ll let you drive.”
Dean didn’t know how he was supposed to feel. What Sam and Bobby had rescued him from had been unbearable, sure enough. And Sam, seeing him—it was like sun after years in the dark. But he didn’t think he could handle being locked up forever, trapping Sam with him to boot.
“Just—you have to give me a chance. You didn’t even—it hasn’t even been a year.”
Maybe it was Sam’s voice, frayed and fragile, or maybe it was how he made Dean think about his deal and the long twelve months between bargain and collection. Dean cleared his throat. “Okay. Okay, Sam.”
****
The place in Flint was just as promised, not even squatters for blocks around them. Sam drove half a mile every Tuesday night to leave their trash on a different part of the grid so that the garbage truck wouldn’t stop in front of their house.
Dean grumbled, but he was safe for the moment. Sam had threatened him with a geas if he didn’t swear that he wouldn’t get the Colt from Bobby, and he’d agreed. Sam thought he expected Sam to accept, eventually, that being locked in a house with only Sam for company, surrounded by every anti-personnel ward they could think of, was no kind of life.
Sam would accept that when he was dead. Maybe.
Dean wouldn’t let up on the subject, making sure Sam knew how miserable he was, and how dangerous he was. What if the house burns down, Sam? Wards won’t do shit then. You know I’m a valuable commodity now, Sam. You think Henry Parker was the only one with that particular bright idea? You gonna kill everyone who knows about me? Sam had shut that one down pretty fast by asking, ‘You gonna let me?’ Dean wasn’t freaked out so much by the question, Sam thought, as the fact that he really had to think about the answer before shaking his head.
When September came and school was supposed to start, Sam expected, there would be another massive showdown, but he had a couple of months before that blowout.
Every couple of days, Sam took off the amulet and went to Dean’s room.
The pathetic thing was, Sam could have been deliriously happy if Dean hadn’t been so set on his worst-case scenarios. Sure, Sam knew that they couldn’t stay like this forever. But a couple of weeks to remember each other, that was all he was asking. Then again, Dean didn’t really want to be as close to Sam as the reverse, so even that part of it wasn’t great for Dean. It was just so hard to remember, when Dean sighed and arched his neck and opened his mouth, when he put his perfect lips on Sam, that it wasn’t because he felt the same things as Sam did.
****
Dean looked over at the clock. “We could go again. If you wanted,” he offered.
Sam froze behind him, and Dean suppressed a sigh; looked like he’d fucked up again. Nobody ever called Dean well socialized. But, crap, he’d missed having this, the certainty of being known under the heat of the glamor. And he’d thought maybe Sam hadn’t yet grown tired of having Dean blocking any chance he had of a real life. Before Sam’s devotion soured into resentment, before Sam learned to regret his stubborn insistence on keeping Dean around, Dean wanted as much of Sam as Sam would give him.
“Why would you—I mean, are you, do you need more?”
Dean was glad he didn’t have to see the confusion on Sam’s face. “Nah. Don’t sweat it.”
“You don’t—” He could feel Sam fumbling for words. Sensitive, the boy was always too sensitive for his own good. Like maybe Dean was supposed to hate the sex now, even though the magic was making sure that it was just as hot as always, plus it was Sam.
“I’m fine, Sammy,” he said, letting the aggravation color his tone so Sam would know he was serious. “It’s just, it’s not like we’ve got to get up early next morning, and it feels good, so.” He felt like an asshole, because what was a reprieve for him was a distraction for Sam, but he just—the alternative was not wanting anything, the way he’d been when Dad died, and if Sam wasn’t going to let him kill himself then Dean was going to ask for a little consideration, that was all.
Sam was silent, long enough that Dean could feel the glamor prickling over his skin again. If he didn’t get a move on, Sam was going to lose the chance to say no.
“Yeah,” Sam said, his voice already rough with readiness to start the next round. “Yeah, okay.”
Afterwards, Sam put the amulet on, then whined when Dean tried to put a pillow wall between them so he wouldn’t get the shit burnt out of him in the middle of the night when Sam, inevitably, tried to colonize Dean’s side of the bed.
Fifteen minutes of shoving and grumbling later, he was about ready to kick Sam out, when he remembered. “Hey,” he said, grabbing Sam’s wrists, “wrap the goddamn thing in silk, all right?”
After that it was all fine.
****
“Maybe if we put you in front of one, it’d be able to tell what happened,” Sam wheedled, as patient as he knew how to be.
“Haven’t we spent enough time being laughed at by demons?” Dean rejoined. Sam didn’t disagree, but the discomfort was worth what they might learn.
In the end, Sam just set it up. He didn’t mention that he’d done the ritual before, so Dean double-checked all Sam’s work. That meant Dean walking over the Devil’s Trap again and again. Sam wasn’t sure who that was meant to reassure, but he hoped Dean took some comfort in the confirmation of his continued non-demonic status. At a different point in his life, Sam might have wanted to share the corruption of blood with Dean. Now he only watched Dean’s shoulders relax a fraction the fifth time he crossed over the painted lines and settled himself on the opposite side of the room.
This time Sam called up an incubus. A male might have different insights, and Dean, with all his fucked-up near-chivalry, was less likely to feel an unwarranted sympathy.
The demon arrived yelling. Sam sloshed an arc of holy water at it to get its attention. It turned to him, beautiful face stretched from hissing.
“Two choices,” Sam said. “First, you hold out on me and I’ll kill you slow. Second, you tell me what I need to know and I’ll make sure you’re fed better than you dreamed was possible.”
“Sam!” Dean squawked. Sam shook his head and kept his eyes on the demon, who was hunching itself to make a smaller target while looking him up and down. Sam wasn’t a hundred percent sure what his demonic reputation was these days, but pretty much any human in the know would have believed both halves of that offer.
The incubus, he noticed, was only a couple of inches shorter than Sam, and muscled like a Bowflex model. Squarish hero’s face, curly brown hair, skin that somehow managed to be both taut and dewy, inviting every kind of touch, like maybe if you licked at it enough you’d get to the candy filling. This wasn’t a possessed body, Sam knew. He wondered what the incubus had looked like in life. Whether, if Dean hadn’t featured so heavily in everyone’s End Times plans, Dean too would have been selected for the special treatment that had produced this demon.
Sam took a deep breath. “Tick tock,” he warned.
The incubus licked its lips, slow and sensuous. “What do you need to know?” The words sounded pornographic in its mouth.
Sam wondered whether his near-addiction to Dean was making him more vulnerable even with the protective amulet, then pushed the fear out of his mind. “What happened to my brother, and how do I fix it?”
The incubus turned, catlike, and examined Dean with the same intensity. Its eyes widened. “Abomination,” he said, and Dean flinched.
“That’s rich, coming from you,” Sam snapped.
The incubus shook its head. “I know what I am. I even know what you are, half-breed. But that--not demon, not angel.” It shuddered. “I think I might be sick.”
“How do I get the incubus out of him?” Sam demanded.
It tilted its head, a cat toying with its prey. Sam clenched his fist. Black blood started dripping from the thing’s nose as it bent over in pain. Sam could feel the pressure building in his head, along with Dean’s nearly-as-powerful hatred for Sam’s powers, which Dean didn’t need a lick of telepathy to convey.
“You’ll never get it out!” the incubus spat, muffled by the blood. “He’ll burn, you’ll burn, you’ll all—”
Sam bent his head and focused, imagined invisible claws extending from his hands all the way through the circle, ripping the incubus to pieces. It died quickly, no possessed body to sustain it, and Sam staggered back.
He heard Dean shuffle towards him, pause a few feet away, then continue on. The hesitation was enough to remind him that he needed to stand on his own, and he straightened, bringing his hand away from his temple (not as if his fingers could unknot the mess of snakes in his head, writhing and biting). He edged away from Dean, far enough that Dean shouldn’t be feeling the amulet.
“I’m fine,” he said, which was mostly true. “It wasn’t possessing a human, so—”
Dean cast an impatient glance at the corpse, which was already starting to look a little gelatinous around the edges. “Yeah, you look just awesome. Not like your head’s about to fall off or anything.”
“No,” Sam insisted, wanting Dean to understand. “With an exorcism, it’s like the demon is threaded through the body. Pulling it out is like weeding—you have to yank really hard to get out the roots. This wasn’t the same at all—” He stopped. “What if I could do it to you?”
“Hunh?” Dean stepped closer. Sam watched carefully but didn’t see the little signs that Dean was in pain, so he allowed it.
“I could pull it out of you,” he said, believing it as the words came to him. “It’s not exactly an exorcism because you’re not possessed, but that incubus wasn’t possessed either and I did fine—”
Dean’s face contorted. Faster than Sam could back away, he got in Sam’s face and shoved him, hard. “You are not fucking fine! Your eye’s full of blood and I know you’re hurting.”
Sam rocked back on his feet and squinted, realizing why he felt like he’d been punched. “Dean,” he said, and stopped, because pointing out that, as Winchester injuries went, this was maybe half a level above a hangnail was not going to be convincing, no matter how true it was. “You said you don’t want to live like this.” Dangerous, because if Sam failed then Dean got another two-by-four in his arsenal of arguments, but worth the risk. This would work, he could feel it.
“And you said you didn’t have the juice left to do anything major. How many demons’d we need to bleed before you got enough gas in the tank?”
Sam frowned. He’d drink a river of blood to save Dean, and he didn’t think he was making up excuses to get back the rush of power. But he’d lied to himself about that kind of thing before. “Ruby said—” he faltered under the weight of Dean’s hatred; he knew the look of rage, fear and contempt wasn’t directed at him, but the knowledge wasn’t comforting, because Dean would have been justified in blaming him as well. “She said that part wasn’t necessary. I think that was about corrupting me. The rest of it, that’s just me. You have to let me try.” His voice cracked, because Dean kept talking about dying, again, killing his soul so there’d be no going back, and Sam just couldn’t handle it any more.
Dean’s hands twitched by his sides, like he wanted to wipe the tears rolling down Sam’s cheeks. He looked away and his shoulders dropped. “You stroke out on me and I swear I’ll bust you out and beat you back into grade school.”
Sam nodded vigorously. “Tomorrow,” he said, because even he understood that Dean wouldn’t let him try right now.
****
Sam grunted his frustration for the tenth or the ninetieth time. “I can’t—with a possession, I can sense the demon,” he explained, finally noticing Dean’s raised eyebrows. “But I can’t—I don’t feel anything different about you. I can’t grab on to what I can’t feel.”
Dean guessed that made sense. “Is it the amulet?” The psychic had said pretty much the same thing, he remembered, and mentioned the amulet as a possible cause.
Sam nodded, following his thoughts. “So, then—”
“Take it off, then move fast after?”
As ideas went, it was far from their worst, and maybe not bad even if you weren’t grading on the Winchester curve. So they ended up slumped together on the bed, Sam’s leg thrown over Dean’s hip as he curled himself around Dean. Dean twisted himself around so that he could see Sam’s face and stop him if he got back into nosebleed territory. Sam put his palm on Dean’s chest, fingers covering big chunks of the tattoo, and took a deep breath as he closed his eyes.
Dean wondered, a little, whether he’d see black if he lifted Sam’s eyelids.
Then the pain hit. Sam had said exorcism was like weeding, a foreign invader pulled out of a body, but this felt more like Sam was pulling out his circulatory system, veins and arteries and capillaries all twisting and tearing as they were ripped loose. He tried not to scream, he tried harder than he’d struggled for his first five years in Hell, but the pain just kept ratcheting up, like every cell in his body was exploding in agony.
The buzz of the incubus glamor setting in again was the sweetest relief since Alastair got him down off the rack.
Sam was frantic this time, and Dean was more out of it than usual, so he was grateful when Sam hauled him into his lap, letting Dean loll his head back onto Sam’s shoulder as Sam thrust up and dug his fingers into Dean’s sides, warm and slippery. Sam was gasping words like ‘anything’ and ‘always,’ and Dean pressed himself against Sam’s skin, their legs locked together.
After, Sam hotfooted off the bed and stumbled back into his shorts. Dean was content where he was, staring at the flaking paint on the ceiling. He should touch that up, he decided. Maybe tomorrow.
“I’m sorry,” Sam said once his breathing had slowed. He sounded defeated. “Once I started looking, I could feel it, but. It’s wrapped around you—around that mark on your shoulder—like a fucking oak tree.”
Aside from everything else, Dean didn’t much like the way Sam still talked about Castiel’s handprint, like it was some kind of mutilation. Maybe Dean hadn’t wanted to lose his scars, maybe he hadn’t wanted to be Heaven’s butt-boy, but Castiel had been a hero at the end and (as usual) he just wished Sam would show a little more respect. “You still don’t get to drink demon blood,” Dean reminded him.
“I know that!” Sam snapped. “I thought—it isn’t the same as it was with real demons. It’s not just strength I need, it’s finesse. If I had a couple of hours to work at it—”
Dean shuddered at the thought of hours of what he’d just been through. But, not going to happen, so he put it out of his mind. He didn’t feel too bad, not really. He hadn’t let himself expect that Sam’s idea would work, and there was a certain relief in not having allowed any hopes to form.
****
Sam had become inured to botched jobs over the past few years, so he only moped for a day or so before starting to work again. He could never push the failure completely out of his mind. He was almost strong enough to save Dean, but not quite, and he honestly wasn’t sure whether it was worse to be a complete loser.
He tried not to fight with Dean about the wasted time with Kelty, but it was difficult, especially since Dean had ended up a sex slave and still wouldn’t admit that leaving Sam had been a bad idea.
Sam had spent a fruitless day of searching for a way to compress time so that he could do in two minutes what would ordinarily take two hours. Dean had been working on the tiles, so when Sam started their usual fight about Dean’s lies they were in the kitchen. “I didn’t do it for the money,” Dean said, out of nowhere.
Sam gaped, anger pushed aside by surprise.
Dean apparently took his silence as disbelief, turning his attention to the dishes stacked by the sink. “I didn’t turn the money down, but they paid so I knew they wanted it, okay?”
The thought of Dean putting a price on himself when he should have been Sam’s was infuriating, yes, but Sam had dealt with that by ignoring it. “Dean,” Sam found his voice, “I never thought any different.”
“Then why do you keep asking about it?” Dean practically yelled.
Because I want to know if I was better than them, Sam thought immediately and winced. Dean threw up his hands and turned away, heading for the door. Sam’s heart pounded and his stomach clenched. Whatever was going on in Dean’s head, it was a fair bet Sam had just made it worse. “Wait,” he said, and Dean froze, hand on the doorframe. “I just—I know you had to do a lot of things you didn’t want to.”
“What else is new?” Dean muttered, which Sam wasn’t going to let distract him. Except—
“Dean?” he asked, hearing the dread in his own shaking voice.
“Never mind, Sam.” Dean’s voice was his fake-Dad voice, the tone evoking orders Sam hadn’t followed in years.
Sam visualized the box of money from Bobby’s attic, the banded stacks crisp and clean despite their origins. Dean had been so casual about the whole thing, lying to Sam easily. So convincing, just like he’d explained their way of life when Sam was a kid, how Dad was really good at parting fools and major corporations from their money. Except that there had been a point when his and Dean’s standard of living had improved noticeably (noticeably for them, at least). There’d been new shoes and lunch money, clothes that didn’t scream Salvation Army so that Sam was now the smart new freak instead of the near-homeless new freak, Dean’s first brand-new gun. That last one, Sam remembered distinctly: Dean had shown Dad, so proud of his ability to contribute to the family business. Dad had praised Dean’s eye for quality, but he’d immediately warned Dean that he had to be careful—money’s not so easy to come by, son—and Dean had ducked his head and said yessir, and after that he’d been careful to hide his upgrades from Dad.
Dean had been barely fifteen.
Saliva flooded Sam’s mouth. He swallowed deliberately, forcing himself still, because if he threw up now he’d never convince Dean that it was anything but disgust for Dean’s choices, for Dean himself.
Dean was still standing in the doorway, back to Sam. He sighed and rubbed the back of his neck, shoulders bunched as he prepared to walk away.
“You did what you had to do,” Sam rushed out.
Dean turned back, uncertain. “Yeah, I did.” Aggressive, like he expected Sam to argue, which Sam wanted to do—Dean did what he thought he had to, not the same thing, except that Sam couldn’t figure out how to say that without accusing Dean of being stupid, which wasn’t what he meant at all. His head was buzzing with the desire to resurrect everyone who’d ever hurt Dean and set a new standard for Hell’s torturers.
If he told Dean that he shouldn’t ever have had to make those choices, Dean wouldn’t get it. He’d think that Sam was complaining about their pathetic fucked-up lives instead of talking about the person Dean was. In Dean’s cosmology, evil existed; people took advantage; Winchesters sucked it up. Sam couldn’t say he was sorry (entirely inadequate, and missing the point) and he couldn’t say he understood (Dean would never want him to).
He breathed out, ragged. He needed to focus on what Dean was going through now, regardless of the underlying structural damage. “I’ll never agree with your choice, but that’s over with. And if there’s anything you want to talk about, I want you to know that I—it’s okay to be angry at them.” It’s okay to be angry at me, he meant, but couldn’t quite get there.
Dean sighed. “It was fucking, Sam. Okay, sometimes freaky fucking, but compared to the rest of my life, that ranks about up there with running out of gas on the highway.”
Sam was almost grateful to be able to fight about this, so he wouldn’t have to review a decade of Dean’s caretaking, looking for evidence he’d ignored before. “Yeah? Those scars on your back say otherwise.” Dean hadn’t said anything, but Sam wasn’t blind. Apparently sadists liked kinky incubus sex too. Sam couldn’t even imagine what it would be like for Dean to suddenly want to get hurt, just because someone else wanted to hurt him. The way he suddenly wanted Sam every time the amulet came off.
Dean bowed his head, exposing the nape of his neck. “I handled that,” he said, and oh there was a story behind that sentence, but Sam wasn’t sure he could deal with it right now.
“Does it feel real?” he asked. “When they want—wanted something you wouldn’t. You wouldn’t ordinarily want, I mean.” He didn’t even know what he wanted to hear, couldn’t imagine a comforting lie or a useful truth.
Dean stared at him, honestly—as far as Sam could tell—puzzled. “There isn’t much realer than a hard-on.”
Maybe that was enough of an answer. Sam had seen enough of Dean’s pre-incubus conquests that he should have known better than to think that Dean would equate sex with feeling.
****
Dean worked in the house, painting, fixing the stairs, picking up some plumbing as he went. He rewired all three stories—the electricity hadn’t been touched since the house was built sometime before World War II, and though Sam didn’t believe him he thought they’d been more at risk of dying in an electrical fire than anything else that might have gotten them, especially with him stealing from the grid. So that felt good, despite the fact that he couldn’t go outside and even worried some about being visible through the front windows. Sam had chosen the location well, though, and days would pass when not a single car came down their street, so he tried not to get nervous.
Sam wouldn’t let him touch any actual spellworks or magical artifacts, and probably thought he was being subtle about it. Whatever, it left Dean time to read, which was kind of nice. He worked his way through David Foster Wallace, Ernest Hemingway, Hunter Thompson, some others. He’d give Sam the names and Sam would retrieve the books.
Dean liked reading books by guys who’d made their marks on the world and then made their own decisions on how to go. Sure, Dean hadn’t written any books, and almost nobody knew how he’d helped save the world, but there was Sam, and Dean figured Sam was as good a memorial as any ten masterpieces. Sam, for all his brains, didn’t notice any particular pattern in his choices, which was one less screaming fight they had to have.
After a while, he started having conversations with Sam again, like they’d had on the phone, just shooting the shit. They argued about whether vampires were alive—“It’s the definition, Sam—something’s alive if you can kill it!”—and whether any good music had been recorded in the present century. They debated Thelma and Louise versus Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Dean always went for Thelma and especially Louise. It was the car that tipped the balance.
****
Dean was concentrating on the diagrams and photos spread out in front of him. Sam inspected him carefully. He looked good. The weight and muscle he’d lost during captivity was returning, and their nightly sessions seemed to be making him even sleeker and prettier than he’d been before he’d been cursed, like there was part of him that did feed like an incubus now. Or maybe he’d always been that way, and Sam hadn’t noticed.
Sam was beginning to hope that his own presence would be enough to deter Dean from the idea of suicide. After Sam spent a horrific hour graphically describing the state of Dean’s post-Hellhound body, Dean became very careful not to do more than hint at how the world would be better off without him.
The cursed house Dean was working on now was one of Bobby’s research projects. Honestly, now that Dean had fixed anything in their squat that looked like it had even considered breaking, it would have been more effective to employ Dean building things, like more EMF detectors. But given enough tools, Dean might well build himself a Colt of his own, or an equivalent—there were plenty of ways to deliver a killing blow without bullets, and Sam didn’t understand enough of the mystical theory to know when a projectile was even required. Ruby’s knife had worked awfully well. So it was probably smarter to make Dean hit the books instead.
Dean glanced up to make sure Sam was paying attention. “The curse is probably written on one of the walls of the house, maybe behind a mirror or something where nobody’d know to find it. There’s a cleansing ritual to untangle the curse from the people once you find it, but the ritual is pretty complicated. Might be smarter just to burn the whole house down.”
Sam nodded. Except that the family might not think they’d been saved from all that much if they had to destroy everything they owned to preserve their lives. “If fire works, why don’t we find the thing and cut it out of the wall, then just burn that part?”
Dean tilted his head, considering. “I don’t know. Maybe. There’s something here about the curse being woven into the bones of the house.”
Woven into the bones. Sam frowned. “You think it might migrate if we burn the curse but don’t do the ritual?”
Dean shrugged. “First time we’ve seen this type of magic used to curse a family. Safer to burn the whole thing.” Dean was all about safety these days, because he couldn’t come along with Sam. He’d made it clear that he would have preferred it if Sam didn’t mess with the supernatural at all, but hunting was Sam’s payment to Bobby for helping them find this place and putting Sam in touch with the right locals while Sam tried to figure out what he was going to do.
Woven into the bones. Like Dean’s incubus, woven into the marks Castiel had left on him.
Cut the wall out and just burn that.
“I’m a moron,” Sam said.
Dean hitched a laugh. “Don’t be so hard on yourself, Sam. Just because you’re not as good a hunter as me—”
“We don’t need to get rid of the incubus,” Sam said, believing it as he said it. “We need to get rid of the angel.”
“What?”
Sam turned away from the table and headed towards his computer, already making a mental list of the books they hadn’t touched since the final battle with Lilith, books of angels and visitations.
****
Dean couldn’t let himself trust Sam’s crazy theory, not even after Sam swore forwards and backwards that the ritual he’d invented had to work, not even after Bobby agreed that it was worth trying. He remembered Sam’s confidence that he could break Dean’s deal, his certainty that he could gank Lilith and stop Lucifer’s rise. Dean wasn’t mean enough to say all that to Sammy, and the situation did seem a bit different now, accident instead of deliberate malice aimed at playing the Winchesters. But hope was more painful than flaying, and Dean had considerable experience with both from which to make that call.
Here was the hard part to admit: if he got cured, he was going to have to figure out how the fuck to live without Sam. But the alternatives were all terrible—he had to admit, even if he did manage to off himself and stay out of Hell, Sam would never be the same, and Dean couldn’t leave him behind like that. Sam had to be sure that he’d done everything he could, just like he’d taken care of Dean since this incubus thing started.
This time at least he wasn’t going to ask Sam for one last pity fuck. Sam had given him more than enough.
****
Dean stood, chest bare, staring at the handprint the way he never did any more. His hand twitched as if he wanted to touch it, but he met Sam’s eyes in the mirror and didn’t move.
“It’s okay to miss him,” Sam said. Sam didn’t, not really, but as bad as that time had been for them Dean didn’t have the same burden of shame every time he recalled what had happened, so he guessed it was easier for Dean to have a couple of warm fuzzy feelings about Castiel.
Dean’s lashes lowered. Sam guessed what he might have said--he pulled me out of Hell; he believed in me when nobody else did, not even you; he died for me--but he stayed silent, so Sam didn’t get to agree. “He wouldn’t want you to keep it, not when it’s doing this to you,” Sam said instead, and that was true too.
Dean snorted and shook his head. “Should’ve known,” he said, casual like he was when he was about to say something too important to be serious about. “’Course anything that touches me’d go to shit eventually.”
“Dean,” Sam said, heart squeezing in his chest, because Dean would find a way for this to be about his own corruption instead of being the target of evil. He wanted to grab on to Dean and squeeze until Dean understood that he was the most precious thing in the universe. Sam would do just that, he swore, as soon as he’d eradicated the incubus from Dean’s body.
“Let’s do this thing,” Dean said.
****
Dean considered that he’d been awesomely reasonable about complying with Sam’s ginned-up ritual. He’d painted the cross on his forehead even though it felt like putting on makeup, what with the holy mud Sam had given him (seriously, holy mud—Sam had blah-blahed his way through an explanation, but Dean had tuned it out). And then he’d painted another cross on his chest. Amazingly, the ritual didn’t require a third cross on his dick, even though that was basically the target.
He wiped his fingers on his jeans, gray and gritty smears. Sam grimaced reflexively and Dean gave him an eyebrow saying roughly that Sam hadn’t provided any tissues so what the fuck; Sam tilted his head, acknowledging the point.
“This is really important,” Sam said, using his Dean-I’m-super-not-kidding-this-time, no-you-really-have-to-know-this voice. “You have to enter into the ritual with a spirit of willingness.”
“The fuck does that mean?” Dean asked, still perfectly calm.
Sam made little flappy motions with his hands. “You know, be open. To whatever.”
“The whole reason we’re doin’ this is ‘cause of how open I am to whatever,” Dean said automatically, and regretted it when Sam flinched. He sighed. “Give me a clue, Sammy.”
“Just—we’re asking for aid. This isn’t about deals. It isn’t even about deserving anything, because that’s not how it works. If help comes, you have to accept it.”
Dean almost smiled at that, because Sam had him pegged right. Left to himself, he wouldn’t let himself trust offered help. He figured he had good reason. Look at what Heaven had demanded in return last time. But he could open himself, he guessed, like he had back when he was talking to Sam through the Ouija board.
And sure enough, when he nodded, Sam sank into the same cross-legged position on the floor. Dean imitated him, far enough away that he wasn’t feeling any heat from the amulet. He made himself relax, working on his breathing until his heartbeat slowed and he was loose and ready.
Sam’s voice, speaking words Dean didn’t know, was like the sound of the Impala’s engine running smooth. Dean trusted him with everything.
Still, he jerked a little when the crosses started to heat up, the mud liquefying again and dripping down his chest and his forehead, drops hanging on his lashes until he blinked them away. Sam sped up, his voice high and strained, and Dean wanted to shout out loud how proud of Sam he was.
Castiel’s handprint started to tingle, like being gripped again. Dean remembered how he’d been at the end, frightened only of losing, joyful in his certainty that his death had meaning. Dean’s tears had fallen onto his face, streaking trails through the grime and blood of the last battle, and Cas had raised two fingers like he was going to deliver one of his knockout specials. But instead he’d tapped Dean’s lips, pressing in a little too hard, like he couldn’t quite control his fingers any more. “Be of good cheer,” he’d said, and right now Dean knew that Sam was right: Castiel wouldn’t want to keep Dean trapped like this.
Dean didn’t pray, but he closed his eyes and remembered Castiel’s grace, unfurling huge and clean over them, so beautiful that even the demons had stopped fighting and known awe.
Sam was punching the words out like bullets, and Dean felt something tear loose inside him.
Invisible doctors were trying to restart his heart, and not being careful with the voltage. He arched up, his arms flying out reflexively. It was better than the best orgasm he’d ever had, and it was like dying, and it was like breaking apart—he imagined doves, exploding out of him in a pulse of white feathers. Behind that there was something else, cobweb-sticky, fragmenting into dust before he had time to really feel it.
He faceplanted practically in Sam’s lap, his arms still twitching and his fingers jittering out an extra rhythm on the floor. His heart was keeping a techno beat and he couldn’t feel his legs.
“Dean!” Sam grabbed at his head, trying to lift it, and then Sam must’ve remembered the amulet, because he backed off and Dean’s nose met none-too-clean carpet. That was enough pain to shock him back into control, and he pushed himself up a couple of inches, enough to lift his head and grin weakly at Sam.
“The handprint’s still there,” Sam said, swallowing, his frown lines already deepening.
Dean bit his lower lip and managed to wobble into a kneeling position, so close to Sam that he should have been feeling the burn. “I don’t think it’s the scar that matters,” he said, and put his hand out to close around the amulet. “You did it, Sam.”
Sam looked down at Dean’s hand, fingers curled so that they brushed his chest, and stopped breathing for long enough that Dean started to worry.
Then he grabbed Dean’s hand and together they pried the cord off of his neck. Dean tossed it into a corner and Sam knelt up, reaching out like he was going to grab Dean’s head with both hands and—
But that was just habit, conditioning from what always happened when Sam took off the amulet. Dean felt his skin heat, purely natural, and swayed backwards, getting back some of the distance he hadn’t noticed himself closing.
Sam looked down, blushing too. “You did it,” Dean repeated, doing his best to get them past the moment.
“Holy shit,” Sam said, raising his head. “Dean—”
“Yeah,” Dean said back, and grinned like a pirate king.
After that there was some hugging, and maybe a couple of manly tears.
Part Seven
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Okay, I always get a little nervous whenever Sam decides to "fix" anything supernatural- given his track record, is that so wrong? So it's nice to actually see it work out once. Whew!
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Awesome!
Fifteen minutes of shoving and grumbling later, he was about ready to kick Sam out, when he remembered. “Hey,” he said, grabbing Sam’s wrists, “wrap the goddamn thing in silk, all right?”
After that it was all fine.
Only Dean would take a horrible moment of torture and twist it around into something he can use.
Dean turned back, uncertain. “Yeah, I did.” Aggressive, like he expected Sam to argue, which Sam wanted to do—Dean did what he thought he had to, not the same thing, except that Sam couldn’t figure out how to say that without accusing Dean of being stupid, which wasn’t what he meant at all.
YUS!
“Should’ve known,” he said, casual like he was when he was about to say something too important to be serious about. “’Course anything that touches me’d go to shit eventually.”
::sobs::
“Yeah,” Dean said back, and grinned like a pirate king.
Awww. I love that image.
Also? Lovely monument to Castiel here. I'd like to think of him going out like that if it came down to it, and I love the understated depth of his relationship to Dean here.
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