![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
For Warnings and Summary, see Master Post
Part Two
He was safe in the room, more than halfway to blitzed, when his cell phone went off. It startled him enough that he dropped the bottle and blearily watched it slide all the way under the bed. The contents spilled over the floor in a pretty, sparkling amber pool. It inched forward slowly, creeping steadily towards his sock-covered foot while he stared.
Back in Black filtered leisurely through his muddied thoughts, and he fumbled for the phone – didn’t think he’d picked up the call soon enough even as he held it to his ear. “’Lo?” he grated out.
“Sam?”
The voice was low, nervous, Dean. He couldn’t answer.
The booze was making his eyes burn.
“Sam,” Dean continued after a pause. “We, uh, we should talk, but… not on the phone.”
“We should?” Sam asked stupidly.
“Yeah, yeah we should. Can you get to the old bridge?”
“Time’s it?” Sam slurred out, staring at the light coming in the windows.
“It’s seven in the morning. Sorry for waking you up. Long freakin’ night, but, you know, I’m just returning the favor.”
“’K,” Sam mumbled, “Give me… 24 hours.” He flipped the phone shut, unable to deal with anything else Dean might have wanted to say to him right then. Later. He’d be able to take it later.
Fumbling another bottle open, he managed to get the lip into his mouth before upending it. He kept the bottle there for a minute, taking several long pulls before he slammed it back down to the floor so he could breathe. The room was spinning, but his bladder was screaming the Halleluiah Chorus. He started to stand, but his legs gave out before he was all the way up, and he was out before he hit the floor.
~o0O0o~
It was a good thing Sam had started the drive early, because the pounding hang-over headache he had made it pretty fucking difficult to stay on the road for long, and he was damn lucky nobody was around when he was breaking in and hot wiring the piece of junk he was in. It had taken for fucking ever, and later in the morning, there would have been more people around. It was true he’d built up his tolerance for booze during the summer Dean was dead, but it had also been a while since he’d drunk anything. Alcohol hadn’t actually been his drug of choice for a long time now.
Nervous nausea roiled around in his stomach, and he was forced to stop the car again so he could wretch helplessly onto the dirt shoulder. It subsided quickly this time, thank God, and he got himself settled back into the car in short order. He should probably just turn the car around. Whatever Dean wanted, it couldn’t be anything good, not after that phone call.
Maybe Dean was planning to kill him. His lack of reaction to that thought was startling in and of itself.
That would be kind of nice, actually – if Lucifer had lied about that, if there really was a simple way out.
Death by his brother’s hand certainly wouldn’t be less than he deserved, and was maybe more welcome than he’d like to admit.
Taking another sip of tepid water from the bottle he was clutching tightly in his left hand, he started the car again with a soft sigh. It didn’t matter what Dean wanted. Good or bad, he couldn’t turn away from his brother anymore than he could stop the apocalypse.
The drive was uneventful but still, he got there late. Dean was waiting for him, leaning calmly against the Impala like he’d been there all night. Sam forced his mind blank as he rolled the car to a stop, denied the faint flicker of hope that wanted to spark. Whatever happened, happened. Maybe Dean just wanted to let Sam know he was okay before he disappeared forever, just wanted to say goodbye in person.
Sam could stop at that good bar in town afterwards. At least, since Lucifer was just going to bring him back, he didn’t have to worry about alcohol poisoning anymore. Maybe, if he drank long enough, he’d never be coherent enough to give Lucifer consent. He made a low noise in the back of his throat. He was pretty sure it was more snort than sob.
He forced himself to get out of the car and took a couple of steps forward. His legs almost gave out before he even reached the front end of his stolen car. Too afraid to leave the security of something he could grab hold of, he paused there.
Dean pushed away from the Impala and closed the distance. “Sam,” he said when he got close. He stopped a foot or two away and looked closely at Sam’s face. Sam couldn’t help but look away. “I… what the hell happened to your face?”
“Got into a bar fight,” Sam replied quickly. It wasn’t exactly a lie, and the words tripped easily off his tongue, his gaze locked on the bridge looming behind them, keeping his brother at the edge of his vision. It was safer.
“Dude, really?” Dean asked, a proud smirk twisting the corners of his mouth up.
Sam swallowed; he couldn’t bring himself to respond and looked down at the ground instead. He could still make out Dean’s face in his peripheral vision without making eye contact, without having to face whatever accusation that might be lingering in Dean’s gaze.
The teasing grin slid away from Dean in the face of Sam’s silence. Sam could feel the moment Dean let it go completely; an irritated puff of breath escaped his lips before he started fumbling around for something at his side.
The ring of metal against a sheath rang out, and suddenly Dean had Ruby’s knife in his hand. Sam’s heart leapt in his chest, and he couldn’t stop the small involuntary step he took away from his brother. Sam’s sense of self-preservation had always been stronger than was healthy, given their life-style… given what he was.
Dean ignored the movement and reversed his grip so he was holding the knife out to Sam hilt first. “If you're serious,” he said quietly, “and you want back in... you should hang on to this. I'm sure you're rusty.”
Fierce relief slammed into Sam, and it was so intense that it stole his ability to form a coherent thought, but he managed to take the knife from Dean. He stared down at it, trying to make sense of Dean’s sudden about-face.
Dean sighed, looked away for a minute, and then continued awkwardly, “Look, man, I'm sorry.” Dean tried to meet Sam’s eyes, but when Sam tried to look up, shame cloaked itself around him. He couldn’t quite do it; his eyes snapped back down to the knife instead. It was a symbol of his failure, but right now, it was also a sign of faith. It was everything Sam needed. “I don't know. I'm...whatever I need to be. But I was, uh—wrong.”
Dean’s quiet disbelief in the face of his admission felt so right, felt so much like Dean, that Sam finally had the courage to look up and ask, “What made you change your mind?”
“Long story. The point is...maybe we are each other's Achilles heel. Maybe they'll find a way to use us against each other, I don't know. I just know we're all we've got. More than that. We keep each other… human.”
You’re a monster, Sam – a vampire.
Sam pushed the labels away; his gratitude for Dean’s change of heart was filling up all of the holes his failures had left. He poured every ounce of sincerity he could muster into his next words. “Thank you. Really, I…” and there was so much still between them that he didn’t really know where to start.
Sam desperately didn’t want to continue the patterns he had started with Dean last year; he knew that keeping more secrets from Dean was the wrong thing to do. When he opened his mouth, though, he couldn’t make the words come out, didn’t even know what the words were. All he could do was cling to his brother as long as Dean was willing to let him. He’d take whatever he could get. “Thank you. I… I won't let you down.”
“Oh, I know it,” Dean snarked back, “I mean, you are the second-best hunter on the planet.” There was concern buried deep in Dean’s eyes, but he wasn’t voicing it, and Sam couldn’t help but be relieved.
This… normality, it was exactly what Sam needed. He knew he could pretend now, with his role-model standing right next to him again. “So, what do we do now?” Sam asked, needing his brother to take charge for a while, even if he couldn’t verbalize that desire.
“We make our own future.”
Sam wasn’t exactly sure what that meant – the statement felt more loaded than it should, but he quietly agreed anyway, “Guess we have no choice.”
“Ditch the junker, Sasquatch,” Dean said, turning his back to Sam and walking back to the Impala. “I’m driving.”
~o0O0o~
”My, my, my, how the high and mighty have fallen…” Reggie says as he moves in on Sam. The covetous expression on his face, in his walk, reminds Sam of a predator, a snake, slow and cautious and ultimately deadly. “I must say though, you took his cock like a pro. Didn’t think I was going to want this, but I most definitely changed my mind after that little show.”
Sam’s jaw aches. The back of his throat is raw and bruised. The thought of having to open up for a second time leaves him shaking. “Please,” he begs, “you guys have your revenge. I’m not gonna forget your little message. Can’t you just go and leave it at that?”
Reggie smiles at him, but Sam isn’t fooled for a minute that it’s friendly. He caresses a hand through Sam’s hair and Sam’s scalp tingles lightly under the touch; it feels good, which makes it worse. This wasn’t supposed to feel good. Sam can’t help jerking away from the contact. Reggie responds by plunging his hand through Sam’s hair, wrapping his hand around the back of Sam’s head, and pulling Sam up from the floor. Sam is shoved against the wall so hard it rips the breath from his lungs with a heavy gasp.
Reggie reaches into a pocket and pulls out a pair of handcuffs. Holding them up so they dangle in front of Sam’s face, he says with a cruel grin, “Let’s play.”
“Sam?”
The heat from the hand resting on his shoulder speared its way into Sam’s consciousness, and he couldn’t... he jerked his forehead from the window he’d been leaning against and fumbled for the door handle, practically falling out of the car in his haste to be free of the confines of the car. He couldn’t get his feet under him when he launched himself backwards through the door, though. He staggered back a few feet before awkwardly falling on his ass.
“Dude, what the fuck?” Dean asked, pulling himself up out of the car so he could look at Sam across the roof.
Sam’s breaths were coming out hard and fast, like he’d been running laps for Dad all morning, and he had to use the car to help pull himself up. Bracing his hands against the curved edge of the passenger side door, he sucked deep lungfuls of air in through his nose to try to get his breathing under control. Aware of Dean’s growing impatience, he asked, “What?” like he didn’t hear. He knew what Dean had said, but he couldn’t get his thoughts in order fast enough to come up with a good explanation for what just happened.
Dean just stared at Sam for a moment, confusion shining from his eyes. He finally gave an exasperated sigh and said, “We’ve been sitting in the motel parking lot for a couple of minutes now. You didn’t even react when we got here. Your eyes were open though, so I know you weren’t sleeping.”
“Sorry, Dean. I was just, lost in thought, I guess.” As excuses go, it’s a little thin, but it’s the best Sam’s got right now.
Dean arched an eyebrow and looked skeptical. “So, what were you thinking about so hard?”
“Last couple hunts,” Sam replied immediately. “I was trying to figure out if there was any kind of pattern.”
Dean opened his mouth but quickly closed it like he’d tasted something bad. He shook his head slightly. “I’m gonna go get us a room.” He walked into the office without looking back.
Sam thought, for what must have been the millionth time since they got on the road, about telling Dean what happened in Oklahoma, but saying it out loud would make it real, make it more important than it was. And anyway, he’d already tried a couple of times, but the words just dried up on his tongue.
The best thing he could do was help Dean find the damn colt; if they wasted Lucifer, this whole damn thing would be over. Over. Right. He had to try really hard to keep the ridiculousness of that thought at bay.
~o0O0o~
Her silky, soft hand flows down his chest and plays over his stomach, tickling the skin playfully. He arches up into the press of soft lips against his chest with a moan. “Jess…”
“Hi, baby,” she says as she licks her way slowly down, further and further, until he feels the moist touch of her tongue on his dick.
Jess is dead.
Cold terror washes over him and he scrambles back, pushing her away. “You aren’t Jess!” he accuses angrily.
“What?” she asks. The look of hurt spilling over her beautiful features twists cruelly at his heart. “Baby, what’s wrong?” She reaches out a hand towards him, and he struggles back further, tangling himself hopelessly in the blankets only to fall backwards onto the floor.
His fall pulls most of the blankets off the bed with him in a twisted mess. “Stop it, just… Stop!” Sam yells furiously.
Jess crawls on her knees to the side of the bed. She kneels there, looking every bit the gorgeous, sexy woman he fell in love with. She shrugs daintily, and then suddenly, she blurs. It hurts Sam’s eyes, forces him to look away for a moment, and by the time he can drag his eyes back up, Lucifer is there in her place.
He smiles sadly at Sam. “I thought it might be easier for you if I looked like that,” he says forlornly.
“You’re a sick fuck. What the hell do you want?”
Lucifer sits back on his feet, and his eyes travel over Sam, assessing. “I came to check on what belongs to me,” he says calmly. The words send a chill down Sam’s spine.
“I don’t belong to you or anyone,” Sam snarls.
The devil smiles down at him and gets up off the bed. “You can say that all you want, Sammy, but it doesn’t make it true.”
“You said you’d never lie, never trick me. What the fuck do you call what you just did?”
Lucifer’s response is swift, doesn’t miss a beat, “A kindness.”
“Fuck you.”
One corner of Lucifer’s mouth twists up in a half smile and he exhales, short and amused, “Well, we’ll just have to see how that plays out.”
“What?”
Lucifer’s tone goes from bored to threatening so fast it leaves Sam reeling. “Get up, Sammy, playtime is over.”
“No.”
Just like that, the bored half smile is back. “Either you do what I say under your own power, or you do it under mine.”
Without making any kind of decision to do so, Sam is suddenly moving to get up. He fights against it, struggles valiantly, but his body is no longer responding to his commands; his body has become his cage. The slimy, used feeling that Meg left on his soul, the feeling that was more buried deep than gone, comes creeping back over him. Just like then, there’s nothing he can do. He isn’t strong enough to fight it off. He’s not strong like Dad.
He climbs back onto the bed, leaving the blankets behind to sprawl out, completely exposed. He can’t move, can’t talk, can’t breathe as deeply as he wants to. Probably he’s getting enough air to live, but the lack of control leaves him dizzy.
Lucifer sits down next to him and rests his hand softly on Sam’s chest. He leans in close and whispers into Sam’s ear, “My world, my rules.” He moves back again, but his distance isn’t at all reassuring. “You do what I say under your own command, or you do it under mine. Now, you may turn your head, and you may talk, but you do not move otherwise. Do you understand?”
Feeling and control rush back into Sam’s body. He sobs out a breath of relief.
“Do you understand?” The threat underlining the words is clear.
Sam turns his head to look at his captor. His breaths are coming sharp and fast. The violation over what just happened clings to him like a second skin. He can’t go through that again. Not right now. “Yes,” he breathes out shakily.
“See?” Lucifer responds calmly, like he’s speaking to a child. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”
Sam just blinks at him, not sure how he’s expected to respond to such an absurd statement.
“Now, grab hold of the headboard.”
“Wh… what?” he gasps out, confused.
“Put your hands on the headboard, and don’t let go unless you’re too weak to take what I’m going to do to you.” The words are derisive, cold.
“I’m stronger than you,” Sam snarls back. The anger helps him lift his arms over his head, and he grips the solid wood tightly, inexplicably grateful for something to hold on to, even though he doesn’t really know what Lucifer’s planning.
The silence stretches uncomfortably between them as Lucifer gazes down at him covetously, his cold eyes heightening Sam’s awareness of how completely exposed he is, how vulnerable.
Movement, when it finally comes, makes Sam flinch back, but he doesn’t loosen his grip on the wood. Lucifer’s hand comes to rest on his forehead, smoothes Sam’s hair back from his face, a comforting move at odds with Lucifer’s clearly sinister intent. Sam shivers under the touch.
“If you let go, if you even try to get away, I’ll make sure you regret it.”
The wooden bars Sam holds on to creak under his tightening grip, and he has a moment to pray that the anticipation is worse than what’s coming. He doesn’t have to wait long.
Lucifer straddles him, but at least the angel is still wearing pants, so how bad can what the creature is planning to do to him really be? Sam’s hands are covered by Lucifer’s, gripped painfully tight around the headboard, and then the devil leans in, presses his cold lips to Sam’s forehead.
Fiery pain rips through him at the point of contact, making him scream in agony. Lucifer keeps Sam’s hands pinned to the headboard while lines of searing misery are traced against his skin. Sam can’t help it, he needs the pain to stop; he struggles to let go, struggles to rip his hands free of the wood and shove the monster above him away, but Lucifer’s hands over his own feel like iron.
He can’t escape. The soft, wet lips against his forehead continue to crash waves of torment through him that leave him nauseous, leave him delirious with pain. Just before he thinks he might lose consciousness, it eases just back to bearable. Lucifer sits back and releases Sam’s hands. He stares at Sam for a long searching moment, and then leans forward until their lips are only a whisper apart. “Mine,” Lucifer breathes out.
Sam presses his hands against his temples and prays for the pounding to stop and Lucifer shifts his weight up to accommodate Sam’s helpless movements. Sam can’t help but take advantage curling into himself to gasp small, wet moans against the sheets.
The devil smiles indulgently over him for a few moments before swinging himself off of Sam to settle in against Sam’s back, wrapping his arms around Sam to pull him in close. Sam used to hold Jess the same way, and he shudders with how invasively intimate the simple hold is.
Sam can’t see the bastard’s face anymore, but it doesn’t make the next words any less ominous. “That was my mark, Sammy. Your mind will stay open to me, even though your body might be hidden. Why don’t you just tell me where you are, and save yourself a bit of pain?”
“Fuck. You.” Sam breathes into the bedding. The words aren’t much, but they’re all the fight Sam has left right now. Mercifully, the throbbing is still easing back quickly, fading back until it’s mostly just an unpleasant memory.
Lucifer turns and leans in close, smiling at him benignly while resting his hand casually on Sam’s bare shoulder. “I think I’ve put you through quite enough tonight. How about I let you get some sleep?”
He knows it’s stupid, but sudden hope floods through him; maybe this is over.
Lucifer is still talking, “We can just lie here together, but I think,” he says with a voice overflowing with concern, “that my current form scares you… I think I know a way to make it easier on you, Sammy. Remember, I know you better than you know yourself.”
Lucifer blurs once again, and when Sam looks back, Dean is sitting, completely naked, in the Devil’s place. “No,” Sam says tightly.
“Shhh…” his brother breathes out, pulling Sam onto his back before laying down next to him. Dean drapes a leg over Sam’s and pulls him in close.
“Please, p… please don’t do this. It’s not… fuck, this is so fucked up,” Sam stutters out. “You’re wrong. I’ve never wanted this. It’s sick.”
Dean… no, Lucifer, he reminds himself, lays what looks like Dean’s head on Sam’s shoulder and strokes down Sam’s side, trailing along the curve of skin over hip bone, moving down further until slipping over Sam’s leg and coming to rest on Sam’s inner thigh. Sam’s having trouble keeping his breathing under control; the short, quick puffs of air that are all he can force into his lungs leave him dizzy and light-headed.
“Please, stop,” he begs.
Lucifer inches his fingers up just a little, teasing just below Sam’s groin. The fingers pause long enough to allow dread, dark and foreboding, to creep into Sam’s veins.
God, please… don’t let him move any higher.
This was never a line he wanted to cross. Not with Dean. Not with his brother. The creeping fingers inch up with slow deliberation to brush Sam’s balls. A gasp, almost a whimper, forces itself from Sam’s lips. Nestling familiarly, the fingers, Dean’s fingers, settle themselves into the dark crevasses of Sam’s groin. The touch feels wrong - overly intimate with the only person he loves more than himself, except… This isn’t Dean. It isn’t Dean. It isn’t Dean.
The tears spill over as he focuses in on the phrase, repeating it over and over, until awareness floats away.
~o0O0o~
Sam snapped awake, unsure what pulled him from sleep. He felt like he’d been up all night digging graves, and he groaned softly as he sat up. His head throbbed once, twice, and then blossomed into a headache to rival his worst hangover. The pain drove him out of bed, and he staggered into the bathroom to lose the meager contents of his stomach into the toilet. By the time he stood up he was shaking and dizzy, and Dean was standing in the doorway looking at him with concern.
“That didn’t sound good,” Dean said with a raised eyebrow. His brother reached out a hand and suddenly Sam was over-conscious about his state of undress. He jerked back out of Dean’s reach, hit the side of the tub hard and tumbled backwards into it.
“Sam?” Dean moved forward, reaching out to help Sam up, and this time there was no way to avoid Dean’s touch. Dean gripped his shoulders tightly, and by the time he was back on his feet and pressed close to his brother, he was feeling like he wanted to crawl out of his skin.
“Dude, you’re burning up,” Dean muttered. His brother maneuvered Sam out of the bathroom and guided him to the bed. Sam couldn’t help but breathe a small sigh of relief when Dean finally backed off a bit.
“Here,” Dean said, holding out a cheap plastic cup filled with tap water. “Drink this or you’re gonna get dehydrated.” Sam took it and brought it to his lips, but his stomach flipped alarmingly. He put it down on the nightstand without drinking any. There was no way he was forcing that down right then. He’d already started to lean back wearily when Dean said, “Why don’t you go back to sleep for a bit?”
“No!” Sam said loudly, jerking himself back up to sitting, “I don’t…”
Dean was looking at him like he had gone completely off the deep-end. Sam opened his mouth to… well, he had no idea what he was gonna say. Dizziness rolled over him again and he couldn’t help but lay back down. It felt way too good to be prone again, and he pressed his face into the pillow with a small, helpless moan.
“We got nothin’ here for sickos, Sammy,” Dean was saying as he shrugged into his jacket. “Get some sleep. I’ll be back in a flash.”
The pain was stabbing through his eyes like a pitchfork, and he thought Dean might have said something else before he left, but whatever it was, Sam couldn’t make it out over the throbbing. The worry in Dean’s tone had been nice, though, missed. It chased him down into the dark.
~o0O0o~
Dean was in the bathroom talking to somebody. Sam groaned, burying his head in the pillow trying to block out the noise. It didn’t help. He could only hear Dean, so he had to be on the phone, talking to someone.
“I don’t know,” Dean said tersely. “Yeah, well, I… He’s been sick for three days…”
Three days? Sam really wasn’t trying to eavesdrop, but the door was open, and Dean didn’t seem to be making any attempt to speak quietly. Sam closed his eyes, assessing himself, his memories. He felt like road-kill, true enough, but he really didn’t remember much. Still, three days didn’t seem possible.
“Yeah, that’s what I’m figuring. …” Dean sounded angry now, which didn’t make a whole lot of sense – how was it Sam’s fault that he’d been sick? “But it’s still the same old shit you know? Like we need this on top of the freakin’ apocalypse and, oh yeah, guess whose fault that is?”
The caustic words slammed into Sam’s stomach, left him reeling, and he wasn’t really sure why he was taken so off guard by the simple fact that Dean still blamed him. That he wasn’t as forgiven as it had seemed back at the rail road bridge.
You’re not you anymore. And there’s no going back… The words whispered maliciously through his mind, and it wasn’t like he’d forgotten what Dean had said in that message, but he had thought that maybe they’d moved on. He wasn’t sure how he’d been so stupid, but just because Dean took him back didn’t mean he was forgiven. Hell, he sure as shit didn’t deserve to be forgiven, he knew that, but he couldn’t deny the hopeless ache Dean’s flippant words raised in him.
“Well, I’m sorry, but it’s true. … Yeah, I know, it… It’s okay, Bobby, just our screwed-to-all-hell luck…”
Sam had eased himself upright by the time Dean came out of the bathroom. Dean looked a little startled when he saw Sam. He stopped just outside the door, looking at Sam with an unreadable expression on his face. “So. Guess you’re gonna live,” Dean said flatly.
Sam managed to shove aside the hostile sounding words. “It’s been three days?” he asked instead.
“Yeah, well, three, goin’ on four.”
“Wow, I… don’t remember much,” Sam chuckled self-depreciatingly. “Doesn’t seem like I was down that long.” Sam’s stomach chose that moment to growl loudly, and he smiled his embarrassment, but Dean just stared at him, didn’t even react. Sam picked at a piece of lint on the bedspread nervously. “Um, who was on the phone?”
“Bobby,” Dean replied tersely.
The silence fell thickly again, and Dean finally dropped his disapproving gaze and moved over to one of the duffels, fumbling around for something. “So,” he said casually, “we didn’t really have time to talk before you got sick. I took out a vampire nest all by myself, and helped Castiel find and trap an arch-angel. What did you do on your summer vacation, Sammy?”
Sam flushed, guilt making his mind blank out, and he stuttered, “I was…nothing really. Just… tending bar, you know?” And there it went: opportunity number 56 to come clean with his brother - salted and burned.
Anger darkened Dean’s features once more when he turned around. “That’s it? Castiel and I are the only ones who did anything interesting?” he asked tightly.
And, yeah, that was yet another blatant opening. He felt ill, shame twisting his stomach painfully, but he couldn’t take it, couldn’t talk to Dean about what had happened when Dean was this pissed. Anyway, his brother was clearly fishing for something specific, and Sam couldn’t imagine what it could be. He was pretty certain the hunters that attacked him wouldn’t brag about sexually assaulting another hunter, even if it hadn’t actually been rape. Full-on nausea began broiling in his stomach again, and his hands were shaking. He hid them under the blankets, praying that Dean doesn’t notice how pathetically close he was to falling apart. “Yeah, that’s it,” he mumbled into his lap.
“Okay, if you say so,” Dean said coldly. He moved to the small table next to the door and snatched up his keys. “Look, I’m tired of being cooped up in the room. I’ll be back.” His brother slammed out the door before Sam could call after him to stop.
A small part of Sam, the old Sam, the one that existed before he started the end of the world, was fuming over Dean’s inexplicable anger. But mostly, he figured it was nothing less than he deserved.
~o0O0o~
Dean slammed the door behind him, but it wasn’t enough to diffuse his rage. Sam was lying. Again. Ruby was gone, and still Sam refused to believe that Dean was strong enough to back him up. Still too fucking broken from hell to be useful, too weak.
There was a bar down the road. He needed a fucking drink.
It’d been Cas who’d brought the rumors to Dean first, demons in the same town Sam had been working in, and Sam using demon blood to save some girl. Sam had claimed he didn’t want to hunt. Why the hell hadn’t he called Dean in instead of taking them on himself.
He hadn’t believed it at first, but one phone call to Bobby and thirty minutes was enough to confirm it. They were going to be lucky if they weren’t hunted themselves soon; they were going to have to keep a low profile for a while, which was no big deal – it’s not like they had an apocalypse to stop right now or anything.
He prowled inside the dimly lit and mostly empty bar and sat at the counter, signaling the barkeep for a couple of shots, relieved when they came quickly and he could knock them back in rapid succession.
He walked over to the pool table and grabbed a cue. God, he couldn’t believe he’d actually defended Sam when Cas had shown up. Three days of what had looked a hell of a lot more like withdrawal than any flu he’d ever nursed his brother through, and still he’d told Cas to get the fuck out, had barely kept himself from swinging a punch that would have only hurt himself. The betrayal was sharp and deep. He was going to have to apologize. Cas had never lied to him. Cas was the one that could be trusted. Not Sam, no matter how many times Dean wished the opposite was true.
He missed another shot and threw the cue stick down angrily, and the bartender immediately yelled at him to be careful with it. Dean walked out before the man could say anything else – he was going to have to find something else to take his mind off his crap life.
~o0O0o~
Sam felt like crap; just getting out of bed left him shaky and out of breath, but he was determined to be ready to do whatever Dean asked of him before Dean came back. It was a struggle, but he managed to get himself cleaned up, dressed and perched on the edge of the bed before his brother returned, even though it pretty much used up every bit of his pitiful reserves to do so. He might have been ready, but he wasn’t sure he was going to be able to get his ass off the bed, when it came down to it.
Dean barely looked at him when he slammed abruptly into the room, making Sam jump. “Okay. Grab your stuff. I got us a hunt.”
Taken aback, Sam watched miserably while Dean moved around the room, throwing his stuff that was strewn around everywhere back into his bags haphazardly. Dean was kind of a slob when Sam wasn’t around to make sure Dean kept it under control.
He wasn’t sure why Dean was suddenly so anxious to get out of there when Sam had only barely woken up after a fairly serious illness. He couldn’t… it didn’t… His thoughts were sluggish, and Dean… Dean’s rapid movements around the room were making Sam dizzy. “What… what’s the hunt?” he finally managed to stammer out.
Dean was in the middle of the weapons check and didn’t pause or even bother to look up. “Dude suffered a head-on collision in a parked car. We’re gonna go check it out. Move your ass, Sam, I wanna make Ohio before nightfall.”
Sam closed his eyes and fought the desire to crawl back into bed and bury himself under the covers. Of all the possible scenarios he’d thought of while Dean had been gone, a hunt, just a normal fucking hunt, like everything was back to normal – that hadn’t even occurred to him. “I... uh…”
Dean finished with the guns and slammed the zipper home while Sam was still trying to collect his thoughts. Before Sam had figured out how to react, Dean picked up his bags and walked out of the room. When he stormed back in a few minutes later, he leveled a glare at Sam, biting out, “Come on, let’s go. Your lazy ass’s been in bed way too long.”
Sam couldn’t hide the flash of hurt that flickered across his face. “I’m… already packed, but… we got bigger problems, don’t you think?”
“I’m sure the apocalypse’ll still be there when we get back,” Dean snapped dismissively.
An ache was building behind Sam’s eyes and was getting worse the longer he sat there trying to make sense of his brother’s actions. He looked down, pressing a hand to his closed lids and rubbing hard to try to shake it off. It didn’t help. The pounding continued to increase, and he looked back up with a sigh. “I just, I mean… if we’re gonna ice the devil…”
Dean’s voice was painfully loud when he angrily cut Sam off, “This is what we’re doing! Okay? End of discussion.”
With an abrupt about face, Dean stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind him. There wasn’t anything to do but go along. If he let it alone, maybe Dean would forget about whatever it was he thought Sam had done this time. At any rate, that was the best plan his throbbing head would let him come up with.
Part One | Part Three
Part Two
He was safe in the room, more than halfway to blitzed, when his cell phone went off. It startled him enough that he dropped the bottle and blearily watched it slide all the way under the bed. The contents spilled over the floor in a pretty, sparkling amber pool. It inched forward slowly, creeping steadily towards his sock-covered foot while he stared.
Back in Black filtered leisurely through his muddied thoughts, and he fumbled for the phone – didn’t think he’d picked up the call soon enough even as he held it to his ear. “’Lo?” he grated out.
“Sam?”
The voice was low, nervous, Dean. He couldn’t answer.
The booze was making his eyes burn.
“Sam,” Dean continued after a pause. “We, uh, we should talk, but… not on the phone.”
“We should?” Sam asked stupidly.
“Yeah, yeah we should. Can you get to the old bridge?”
“Time’s it?” Sam slurred out, staring at the light coming in the windows.
“It’s seven in the morning. Sorry for waking you up. Long freakin’ night, but, you know, I’m just returning the favor.”
“’K,” Sam mumbled, “Give me… 24 hours.” He flipped the phone shut, unable to deal with anything else Dean might have wanted to say to him right then. Later. He’d be able to take it later.
Fumbling another bottle open, he managed to get the lip into his mouth before upending it. He kept the bottle there for a minute, taking several long pulls before he slammed it back down to the floor so he could breathe. The room was spinning, but his bladder was screaming the Halleluiah Chorus. He started to stand, but his legs gave out before he was all the way up, and he was out before he hit the floor.
~o0O0o~
It was a good thing Sam had started the drive early, because the pounding hang-over headache he had made it pretty fucking difficult to stay on the road for long, and he was damn lucky nobody was around when he was breaking in and hot wiring the piece of junk he was in. It had taken for fucking ever, and later in the morning, there would have been more people around. It was true he’d built up his tolerance for booze during the summer Dean was dead, but it had also been a while since he’d drunk anything. Alcohol hadn’t actually been his drug of choice for a long time now.
Nervous nausea roiled around in his stomach, and he was forced to stop the car again so he could wretch helplessly onto the dirt shoulder. It subsided quickly this time, thank God, and he got himself settled back into the car in short order. He should probably just turn the car around. Whatever Dean wanted, it couldn’t be anything good, not after that phone call.
Maybe Dean was planning to kill him. His lack of reaction to that thought was startling in and of itself.
That would be kind of nice, actually – if Lucifer had lied about that, if there really was a simple way out.
Death by his brother’s hand certainly wouldn’t be less than he deserved, and was maybe more welcome than he’d like to admit.
Taking another sip of tepid water from the bottle he was clutching tightly in his left hand, he started the car again with a soft sigh. It didn’t matter what Dean wanted. Good or bad, he couldn’t turn away from his brother anymore than he could stop the apocalypse.
The drive was uneventful but still, he got there late. Dean was waiting for him, leaning calmly against the Impala like he’d been there all night. Sam forced his mind blank as he rolled the car to a stop, denied the faint flicker of hope that wanted to spark. Whatever happened, happened. Maybe Dean just wanted to let Sam know he was okay before he disappeared forever, just wanted to say goodbye in person.
Sam could stop at that good bar in town afterwards. At least, since Lucifer was just going to bring him back, he didn’t have to worry about alcohol poisoning anymore. Maybe, if he drank long enough, he’d never be coherent enough to give Lucifer consent. He made a low noise in the back of his throat. He was pretty sure it was more snort than sob.
He forced himself to get out of the car and took a couple of steps forward. His legs almost gave out before he even reached the front end of his stolen car. Too afraid to leave the security of something he could grab hold of, he paused there.
Dean pushed away from the Impala and closed the distance. “Sam,” he said when he got close. He stopped a foot or two away and looked closely at Sam’s face. Sam couldn’t help but look away. “I… what the hell happened to your face?”
“Got into a bar fight,” Sam replied quickly. It wasn’t exactly a lie, and the words tripped easily off his tongue, his gaze locked on the bridge looming behind them, keeping his brother at the edge of his vision. It was safer.
“Dude, really?” Dean asked, a proud smirk twisting the corners of his mouth up.
Sam swallowed; he couldn’t bring himself to respond and looked down at the ground instead. He could still make out Dean’s face in his peripheral vision without making eye contact, without having to face whatever accusation that might be lingering in Dean’s gaze.
The teasing grin slid away from Dean in the face of Sam’s silence. Sam could feel the moment Dean let it go completely; an irritated puff of breath escaped his lips before he started fumbling around for something at his side.
The ring of metal against a sheath rang out, and suddenly Dean had Ruby’s knife in his hand. Sam’s heart leapt in his chest, and he couldn’t stop the small involuntary step he took away from his brother. Sam’s sense of self-preservation had always been stronger than was healthy, given their life-style… given what he was.
Dean ignored the movement and reversed his grip so he was holding the knife out to Sam hilt first. “If you're serious,” he said quietly, “and you want back in... you should hang on to this. I'm sure you're rusty.”
Fierce relief slammed into Sam, and it was so intense that it stole his ability to form a coherent thought, but he managed to take the knife from Dean. He stared down at it, trying to make sense of Dean’s sudden about-face.
Dean sighed, looked away for a minute, and then continued awkwardly, “Look, man, I'm sorry.” Dean tried to meet Sam’s eyes, but when Sam tried to look up, shame cloaked itself around him. He couldn’t quite do it; his eyes snapped back down to the knife instead. It was a symbol of his failure, but right now, it was also a sign of faith. It was everything Sam needed. “I don't know. I'm...whatever I need to be. But I was, uh—wrong.”
Dean’s quiet disbelief in the face of his admission felt so right, felt so much like Dean, that Sam finally had the courage to look up and ask, “What made you change your mind?”
“Long story. The point is...maybe we are each other's Achilles heel. Maybe they'll find a way to use us against each other, I don't know. I just know we're all we've got. More than that. We keep each other… human.”
You’re a monster, Sam – a vampire.
Sam pushed the labels away; his gratitude for Dean’s change of heart was filling up all of the holes his failures had left. He poured every ounce of sincerity he could muster into his next words. “Thank you. Really, I…” and there was so much still between them that he didn’t really know where to start.
Sam desperately didn’t want to continue the patterns he had started with Dean last year; he knew that keeping more secrets from Dean was the wrong thing to do. When he opened his mouth, though, he couldn’t make the words come out, didn’t even know what the words were. All he could do was cling to his brother as long as Dean was willing to let him. He’d take whatever he could get. “Thank you. I… I won't let you down.”
“Oh, I know it,” Dean snarked back, “I mean, you are the second-best hunter on the planet.” There was concern buried deep in Dean’s eyes, but he wasn’t voicing it, and Sam couldn’t help but be relieved.
This… normality, it was exactly what Sam needed. He knew he could pretend now, with his role-model standing right next to him again. “So, what do we do now?” Sam asked, needing his brother to take charge for a while, even if he couldn’t verbalize that desire.
“We make our own future.”
Sam wasn’t exactly sure what that meant – the statement felt more loaded than it should, but he quietly agreed anyway, “Guess we have no choice.”
“Ditch the junker, Sasquatch,” Dean said, turning his back to Sam and walking back to the Impala. “I’m driving.”
~o0O0o~
”My, my, my, how the high and mighty have fallen…” Reggie says as he moves in on Sam. The covetous expression on his face, in his walk, reminds Sam of a predator, a snake, slow and cautious and ultimately deadly. “I must say though, you took his cock like a pro. Didn’t think I was going to want this, but I most definitely changed my mind after that little show.”
Sam’s jaw aches. The back of his throat is raw and bruised. The thought of having to open up for a second time leaves him shaking. “Please,” he begs, “you guys have your revenge. I’m not gonna forget your little message. Can’t you just go and leave it at that?”
Reggie smiles at him, but Sam isn’t fooled for a minute that it’s friendly. He caresses a hand through Sam’s hair and Sam’s scalp tingles lightly under the touch; it feels good, which makes it worse. This wasn’t supposed to feel good. Sam can’t help jerking away from the contact. Reggie responds by plunging his hand through Sam’s hair, wrapping his hand around the back of Sam’s head, and pulling Sam up from the floor. Sam is shoved against the wall so hard it rips the breath from his lungs with a heavy gasp.
Reggie reaches into a pocket and pulls out a pair of handcuffs. Holding them up so they dangle in front of Sam’s face, he says with a cruel grin, “Let’s play.”
“Sam?”
The heat from the hand resting on his shoulder speared its way into Sam’s consciousness, and he couldn’t... he jerked his forehead from the window he’d been leaning against and fumbled for the door handle, practically falling out of the car in his haste to be free of the confines of the car. He couldn’t get his feet under him when he launched himself backwards through the door, though. He staggered back a few feet before awkwardly falling on his ass.
“Dude, what the fuck?” Dean asked, pulling himself up out of the car so he could look at Sam across the roof.
Sam’s breaths were coming out hard and fast, like he’d been running laps for Dad all morning, and he had to use the car to help pull himself up. Bracing his hands against the curved edge of the passenger side door, he sucked deep lungfuls of air in through his nose to try to get his breathing under control. Aware of Dean’s growing impatience, he asked, “What?” like he didn’t hear. He knew what Dean had said, but he couldn’t get his thoughts in order fast enough to come up with a good explanation for what just happened.
Dean just stared at Sam for a moment, confusion shining from his eyes. He finally gave an exasperated sigh and said, “We’ve been sitting in the motel parking lot for a couple of minutes now. You didn’t even react when we got here. Your eyes were open though, so I know you weren’t sleeping.”
“Sorry, Dean. I was just, lost in thought, I guess.” As excuses go, it’s a little thin, but it’s the best Sam’s got right now.
Dean arched an eyebrow and looked skeptical. “So, what were you thinking about so hard?”
“Last couple hunts,” Sam replied immediately. “I was trying to figure out if there was any kind of pattern.”
Dean opened his mouth but quickly closed it like he’d tasted something bad. He shook his head slightly. “I’m gonna go get us a room.” He walked into the office without looking back.
Sam thought, for what must have been the millionth time since they got on the road, about telling Dean what happened in Oklahoma, but saying it out loud would make it real, make it more important than it was. And anyway, he’d already tried a couple of times, but the words just dried up on his tongue.
The best thing he could do was help Dean find the damn colt; if they wasted Lucifer, this whole damn thing would be over. Over. Right. He had to try really hard to keep the ridiculousness of that thought at bay.
~o0O0o~
Her silky, soft hand flows down his chest and plays over his stomach, tickling the skin playfully. He arches up into the press of soft lips against his chest with a moan. “Jess…”
“Hi, baby,” she says as she licks her way slowly down, further and further, until he feels the moist touch of her tongue on his dick.
Jess is dead.
Cold terror washes over him and he scrambles back, pushing her away. “You aren’t Jess!” he accuses angrily.
“What?” she asks. The look of hurt spilling over her beautiful features twists cruelly at his heart. “Baby, what’s wrong?” She reaches out a hand towards him, and he struggles back further, tangling himself hopelessly in the blankets only to fall backwards onto the floor.
His fall pulls most of the blankets off the bed with him in a twisted mess. “Stop it, just… Stop!” Sam yells furiously.
Jess crawls on her knees to the side of the bed. She kneels there, looking every bit the gorgeous, sexy woman he fell in love with. She shrugs daintily, and then suddenly, she blurs. It hurts Sam’s eyes, forces him to look away for a moment, and by the time he can drag his eyes back up, Lucifer is there in her place.
He smiles sadly at Sam. “I thought it might be easier for you if I looked like that,” he says forlornly.
“You’re a sick fuck. What the hell do you want?”
Lucifer sits back on his feet, and his eyes travel over Sam, assessing. “I came to check on what belongs to me,” he says calmly. The words send a chill down Sam’s spine.
“I don’t belong to you or anyone,” Sam snarls.
The devil smiles down at him and gets up off the bed. “You can say that all you want, Sammy, but it doesn’t make it true.”
“You said you’d never lie, never trick me. What the fuck do you call what you just did?”
Lucifer’s response is swift, doesn’t miss a beat, “A kindness.”
“Fuck you.”
One corner of Lucifer’s mouth twists up in a half smile and he exhales, short and amused, “Well, we’ll just have to see how that plays out.”
“What?”
Lucifer’s tone goes from bored to threatening so fast it leaves Sam reeling. “Get up, Sammy, playtime is over.”
“No.”
Just like that, the bored half smile is back. “Either you do what I say under your own power, or you do it under mine.”
Without making any kind of decision to do so, Sam is suddenly moving to get up. He fights against it, struggles valiantly, but his body is no longer responding to his commands; his body has become his cage. The slimy, used feeling that Meg left on his soul, the feeling that was more buried deep than gone, comes creeping back over him. Just like then, there’s nothing he can do. He isn’t strong enough to fight it off. He’s not strong like Dad.
He climbs back onto the bed, leaving the blankets behind to sprawl out, completely exposed. He can’t move, can’t talk, can’t breathe as deeply as he wants to. Probably he’s getting enough air to live, but the lack of control leaves him dizzy.
Lucifer sits down next to him and rests his hand softly on Sam’s chest. He leans in close and whispers into Sam’s ear, “My world, my rules.” He moves back again, but his distance isn’t at all reassuring. “You do what I say under your own command, or you do it under mine. Now, you may turn your head, and you may talk, but you do not move otherwise. Do you understand?”
Feeling and control rush back into Sam’s body. He sobs out a breath of relief.
“Do you understand?” The threat underlining the words is clear.
Sam turns his head to look at his captor. His breaths are coming sharp and fast. The violation over what just happened clings to him like a second skin. He can’t go through that again. Not right now. “Yes,” he breathes out shakily.
“See?” Lucifer responds calmly, like he’s speaking to a child. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”
Sam just blinks at him, not sure how he’s expected to respond to such an absurd statement.
“Now, grab hold of the headboard.”
“Wh… what?” he gasps out, confused.
“Put your hands on the headboard, and don’t let go unless you’re too weak to take what I’m going to do to you.” The words are derisive, cold.
“I’m stronger than you,” Sam snarls back. The anger helps him lift his arms over his head, and he grips the solid wood tightly, inexplicably grateful for something to hold on to, even though he doesn’t really know what Lucifer’s planning.
The silence stretches uncomfortably between them as Lucifer gazes down at him covetously, his cold eyes heightening Sam’s awareness of how completely exposed he is, how vulnerable.
Movement, when it finally comes, makes Sam flinch back, but he doesn’t loosen his grip on the wood. Lucifer’s hand comes to rest on his forehead, smoothes Sam’s hair back from his face, a comforting move at odds with Lucifer’s clearly sinister intent. Sam shivers under the touch.
“If you let go, if you even try to get away, I’ll make sure you regret it.”
The wooden bars Sam holds on to creak under his tightening grip, and he has a moment to pray that the anticipation is worse than what’s coming. He doesn’t have to wait long.
Lucifer straddles him, but at least the angel is still wearing pants, so how bad can what the creature is planning to do to him really be? Sam’s hands are covered by Lucifer’s, gripped painfully tight around the headboard, and then the devil leans in, presses his cold lips to Sam’s forehead.
Fiery pain rips through him at the point of contact, making him scream in agony. Lucifer keeps Sam’s hands pinned to the headboard while lines of searing misery are traced against his skin. Sam can’t help it, he needs the pain to stop; he struggles to let go, struggles to rip his hands free of the wood and shove the monster above him away, but Lucifer’s hands over his own feel like iron.
He can’t escape. The soft, wet lips against his forehead continue to crash waves of torment through him that leave him nauseous, leave him delirious with pain. Just before he thinks he might lose consciousness, it eases just back to bearable. Lucifer sits back and releases Sam’s hands. He stares at Sam for a long searching moment, and then leans forward until their lips are only a whisper apart. “Mine,” Lucifer breathes out.
Sam presses his hands against his temples and prays for the pounding to stop and Lucifer shifts his weight up to accommodate Sam’s helpless movements. Sam can’t help but take advantage curling into himself to gasp small, wet moans against the sheets.
The devil smiles indulgently over him for a few moments before swinging himself off of Sam to settle in against Sam’s back, wrapping his arms around Sam to pull him in close. Sam used to hold Jess the same way, and he shudders with how invasively intimate the simple hold is.
Sam can’t see the bastard’s face anymore, but it doesn’t make the next words any less ominous. “That was my mark, Sammy. Your mind will stay open to me, even though your body might be hidden. Why don’t you just tell me where you are, and save yourself a bit of pain?”
“Fuck. You.” Sam breathes into the bedding. The words aren’t much, but they’re all the fight Sam has left right now. Mercifully, the throbbing is still easing back quickly, fading back until it’s mostly just an unpleasant memory.
Lucifer turns and leans in close, smiling at him benignly while resting his hand casually on Sam’s bare shoulder. “I think I’ve put you through quite enough tonight. How about I let you get some sleep?”
He knows it’s stupid, but sudden hope floods through him; maybe this is over.
Lucifer is still talking, “We can just lie here together, but I think,” he says with a voice overflowing with concern, “that my current form scares you… I think I know a way to make it easier on you, Sammy. Remember, I know you better than you know yourself.”
Lucifer blurs once again, and when Sam looks back, Dean is sitting, completely naked, in the Devil’s place. “No,” Sam says tightly.
“Shhh…” his brother breathes out, pulling Sam onto his back before laying down next to him. Dean drapes a leg over Sam’s and pulls him in close.
“Please, p… please don’t do this. It’s not… fuck, this is so fucked up,” Sam stutters out. “You’re wrong. I’ve never wanted this. It’s sick.”
Dean… no, Lucifer, he reminds himself, lays what looks like Dean’s head on Sam’s shoulder and strokes down Sam’s side, trailing along the curve of skin over hip bone, moving down further until slipping over Sam’s leg and coming to rest on Sam’s inner thigh. Sam’s having trouble keeping his breathing under control; the short, quick puffs of air that are all he can force into his lungs leave him dizzy and light-headed.
“Please, stop,” he begs.
Lucifer inches his fingers up just a little, teasing just below Sam’s groin. The fingers pause long enough to allow dread, dark and foreboding, to creep into Sam’s veins.
God, please… don’t let him move any higher.
This was never a line he wanted to cross. Not with Dean. Not with his brother. The creeping fingers inch up with slow deliberation to brush Sam’s balls. A gasp, almost a whimper, forces itself from Sam’s lips. Nestling familiarly, the fingers, Dean’s fingers, settle themselves into the dark crevasses of Sam’s groin. The touch feels wrong - overly intimate with the only person he loves more than himself, except… This isn’t Dean. It isn’t Dean. It isn’t Dean.
The tears spill over as he focuses in on the phrase, repeating it over and over, until awareness floats away.
~o0O0o~
Sam snapped awake, unsure what pulled him from sleep. He felt like he’d been up all night digging graves, and he groaned softly as he sat up. His head throbbed once, twice, and then blossomed into a headache to rival his worst hangover. The pain drove him out of bed, and he staggered into the bathroom to lose the meager contents of his stomach into the toilet. By the time he stood up he was shaking and dizzy, and Dean was standing in the doorway looking at him with concern.
“That didn’t sound good,” Dean said with a raised eyebrow. His brother reached out a hand and suddenly Sam was over-conscious about his state of undress. He jerked back out of Dean’s reach, hit the side of the tub hard and tumbled backwards into it.
“Sam?” Dean moved forward, reaching out to help Sam up, and this time there was no way to avoid Dean’s touch. Dean gripped his shoulders tightly, and by the time he was back on his feet and pressed close to his brother, he was feeling like he wanted to crawl out of his skin.
“Dude, you’re burning up,” Dean muttered. His brother maneuvered Sam out of the bathroom and guided him to the bed. Sam couldn’t help but breathe a small sigh of relief when Dean finally backed off a bit.
“Here,” Dean said, holding out a cheap plastic cup filled with tap water. “Drink this or you’re gonna get dehydrated.” Sam took it and brought it to his lips, but his stomach flipped alarmingly. He put it down on the nightstand without drinking any. There was no way he was forcing that down right then. He’d already started to lean back wearily when Dean said, “Why don’t you go back to sleep for a bit?”
“No!” Sam said loudly, jerking himself back up to sitting, “I don’t…”
Dean was looking at him like he had gone completely off the deep-end. Sam opened his mouth to… well, he had no idea what he was gonna say. Dizziness rolled over him again and he couldn’t help but lay back down. It felt way too good to be prone again, and he pressed his face into the pillow with a small, helpless moan.
“We got nothin’ here for sickos, Sammy,” Dean was saying as he shrugged into his jacket. “Get some sleep. I’ll be back in a flash.”
The pain was stabbing through his eyes like a pitchfork, and he thought Dean might have said something else before he left, but whatever it was, Sam couldn’t make it out over the throbbing. The worry in Dean’s tone had been nice, though, missed. It chased him down into the dark.
~o0O0o~
Dean was in the bathroom talking to somebody. Sam groaned, burying his head in the pillow trying to block out the noise. It didn’t help. He could only hear Dean, so he had to be on the phone, talking to someone.
“I don’t know,” Dean said tersely. “Yeah, well, I… He’s been sick for three days…”
Three days? Sam really wasn’t trying to eavesdrop, but the door was open, and Dean didn’t seem to be making any attempt to speak quietly. Sam closed his eyes, assessing himself, his memories. He felt like road-kill, true enough, but he really didn’t remember much. Still, three days didn’t seem possible.
“Yeah, that’s what I’m figuring. …” Dean sounded angry now, which didn’t make a whole lot of sense – how was it Sam’s fault that he’d been sick? “But it’s still the same old shit you know? Like we need this on top of the freakin’ apocalypse and, oh yeah, guess whose fault that is?”
The caustic words slammed into Sam’s stomach, left him reeling, and he wasn’t really sure why he was taken so off guard by the simple fact that Dean still blamed him. That he wasn’t as forgiven as it had seemed back at the rail road bridge.
You’re not you anymore. And there’s no going back… The words whispered maliciously through his mind, and it wasn’t like he’d forgotten what Dean had said in that message, but he had thought that maybe they’d moved on. He wasn’t sure how he’d been so stupid, but just because Dean took him back didn’t mean he was forgiven. Hell, he sure as shit didn’t deserve to be forgiven, he knew that, but he couldn’t deny the hopeless ache Dean’s flippant words raised in him.
“Well, I’m sorry, but it’s true. … Yeah, I know, it… It’s okay, Bobby, just our screwed-to-all-hell luck…”
Sam had eased himself upright by the time Dean came out of the bathroom. Dean looked a little startled when he saw Sam. He stopped just outside the door, looking at Sam with an unreadable expression on his face. “So. Guess you’re gonna live,” Dean said flatly.
Sam managed to shove aside the hostile sounding words. “It’s been three days?” he asked instead.
“Yeah, well, three, goin’ on four.”
“Wow, I… don’t remember much,” Sam chuckled self-depreciatingly. “Doesn’t seem like I was down that long.” Sam’s stomach chose that moment to growl loudly, and he smiled his embarrassment, but Dean just stared at him, didn’t even react. Sam picked at a piece of lint on the bedspread nervously. “Um, who was on the phone?”
“Bobby,” Dean replied tersely.
The silence fell thickly again, and Dean finally dropped his disapproving gaze and moved over to one of the duffels, fumbling around for something. “So,” he said casually, “we didn’t really have time to talk before you got sick. I took out a vampire nest all by myself, and helped Castiel find and trap an arch-angel. What did you do on your summer vacation, Sammy?”
Sam flushed, guilt making his mind blank out, and he stuttered, “I was…nothing really. Just… tending bar, you know?” And there it went: opportunity number 56 to come clean with his brother - salted and burned.
Anger darkened Dean’s features once more when he turned around. “That’s it? Castiel and I are the only ones who did anything interesting?” he asked tightly.
And, yeah, that was yet another blatant opening. He felt ill, shame twisting his stomach painfully, but he couldn’t take it, couldn’t talk to Dean about what had happened when Dean was this pissed. Anyway, his brother was clearly fishing for something specific, and Sam couldn’t imagine what it could be. He was pretty certain the hunters that attacked him wouldn’t brag about sexually assaulting another hunter, even if it hadn’t actually been rape. Full-on nausea began broiling in his stomach again, and his hands were shaking. He hid them under the blankets, praying that Dean doesn’t notice how pathetically close he was to falling apart. “Yeah, that’s it,” he mumbled into his lap.
“Okay, if you say so,” Dean said coldly. He moved to the small table next to the door and snatched up his keys. “Look, I’m tired of being cooped up in the room. I’ll be back.” His brother slammed out the door before Sam could call after him to stop.
A small part of Sam, the old Sam, the one that existed before he started the end of the world, was fuming over Dean’s inexplicable anger. But mostly, he figured it was nothing less than he deserved.
~o0O0o~
Dean slammed the door behind him, but it wasn’t enough to diffuse his rage. Sam was lying. Again. Ruby was gone, and still Sam refused to believe that Dean was strong enough to back him up. Still too fucking broken from hell to be useful, too weak.
There was a bar down the road. He needed a fucking drink.
It’d been Cas who’d brought the rumors to Dean first, demons in the same town Sam had been working in, and Sam using demon blood to save some girl. Sam had claimed he didn’t want to hunt. Why the hell hadn’t he called Dean in instead of taking them on himself.
He hadn’t believed it at first, but one phone call to Bobby and thirty minutes was enough to confirm it. They were going to be lucky if they weren’t hunted themselves soon; they were going to have to keep a low profile for a while, which was no big deal – it’s not like they had an apocalypse to stop right now or anything.
He prowled inside the dimly lit and mostly empty bar and sat at the counter, signaling the barkeep for a couple of shots, relieved when they came quickly and he could knock them back in rapid succession.
He walked over to the pool table and grabbed a cue. God, he couldn’t believe he’d actually defended Sam when Cas had shown up. Three days of what had looked a hell of a lot more like withdrawal than any flu he’d ever nursed his brother through, and still he’d told Cas to get the fuck out, had barely kept himself from swinging a punch that would have only hurt himself. The betrayal was sharp and deep. He was going to have to apologize. Cas had never lied to him. Cas was the one that could be trusted. Not Sam, no matter how many times Dean wished the opposite was true.
He missed another shot and threw the cue stick down angrily, and the bartender immediately yelled at him to be careful with it. Dean walked out before the man could say anything else – he was going to have to find something else to take his mind off his crap life.
~o0O0o~
Sam felt like crap; just getting out of bed left him shaky and out of breath, but he was determined to be ready to do whatever Dean asked of him before Dean came back. It was a struggle, but he managed to get himself cleaned up, dressed and perched on the edge of the bed before his brother returned, even though it pretty much used up every bit of his pitiful reserves to do so. He might have been ready, but he wasn’t sure he was going to be able to get his ass off the bed, when it came down to it.
Dean barely looked at him when he slammed abruptly into the room, making Sam jump. “Okay. Grab your stuff. I got us a hunt.”
Taken aback, Sam watched miserably while Dean moved around the room, throwing his stuff that was strewn around everywhere back into his bags haphazardly. Dean was kind of a slob when Sam wasn’t around to make sure Dean kept it under control.
He wasn’t sure why Dean was suddenly so anxious to get out of there when Sam had only barely woken up after a fairly serious illness. He couldn’t… it didn’t… His thoughts were sluggish, and Dean… Dean’s rapid movements around the room were making Sam dizzy. “What… what’s the hunt?” he finally managed to stammer out.
Dean was in the middle of the weapons check and didn’t pause or even bother to look up. “Dude suffered a head-on collision in a parked car. We’re gonna go check it out. Move your ass, Sam, I wanna make Ohio before nightfall.”
Sam closed his eyes and fought the desire to crawl back into bed and bury himself under the covers. Of all the possible scenarios he’d thought of while Dean had been gone, a hunt, just a normal fucking hunt, like everything was back to normal – that hadn’t even occurred to him. “I... uh…”
Dean finished with the guns and slammed the zipper home while Sam was still trying to collect his thoughts. Before Sam had figured out how to react, Dean picked up his bags and walked out of the room. When he stormed back in a few minutes later, he leveled a glare at Sam, biting out, “Come on, let’s go. Your lazy ass’s been in bed way too long.”
Sam couldn’t hide the flash of hurt that flickered across his face. “I’m… already packed, but… we got bigger problems, don’t you think?”
“I’m sure the apocalypse’ll still be there when we get back,” Dean snapped dismissively.
An ache was building behind Sam’s eyes and was getting worse the longer he sat there trying to make sense of his brother’s actions. He looked down, pressing a hand to his closed lids and rubbing hard to try to shake it off. It didn’t help. The pounding continued to increase, and he looked back up with a sigh. “I just, I mean… if we’re gonna ice the devil…”
Dean’s voice was painfully loud when he angrily cut Sam off, “This is what we’re doing! Okay? End of discussion.”
With an abrupt about face, Dean stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind him. There wasn’t anything to do but go along. If he let it alone, maybe Dean would forget about whatever it was he thought Sam had done this time. At any rate, that was the best plan his throbbing head would let him come up with.
Part One | Part Three
Tags: