Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/6927268.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Underage
  Category:
      M/M, Multi
  Fandom:
      Supernatural
  Relationship:
      Dean_Winchester/Sam_Winchester, Sam_Winchester/Original_Male_Character(s)
  Character:
      Dean_Winchester, Sam_Winchester, Original_Male_Character(s)
  Additional Tags:
      Alternate_Universe_-_Prostitution, Sibling_Incest, Underage_Sex, Explicit
      Language, Tattoos, Runes, Emotional_Manipulation, Phone_Sex, BDSM,
      Bloodplay, Stanford_Era, Bisexual_Dean, Dubious_Morality, Handcuffs, Drug
      Use, Rough_Sex, Flashbacks, Magic, Whipping
  Series:
      Part 1 of Five_Districts,_Five_Drugs, Part 1 of Otherside
  Stats:
      Published: 2007-01-12 Completed: 2007-01-16 Chapters: 5/5 Words: 28469
****** Otherside ******
by rei_c
Summary
     Dean goes to pick Sam up from Stanford and ends up finding more than
     he bargained for.
***** Chapter 1 *****
With traffic on Embarcadero behind him, Dean calls the registrar's office and
says he works for a law firm he picked out of the San Francisco phone book not
five minutes before, says that a "Samuel Winchester's applied for a job and
lists Stanford as his current enrollment. It's just procedure, background
checks, you know how it goes," and the woman on the other end of the phone
sighs in agreement. He can hear her clicking away at a computer, hears her make
a noise that only ever accompanies frowns.
"I'm sorry. Mr. Winchester was a student here, but he resigned his scholarship
and transferred out four semesters ago. If you give me just one second," she
says, and now Dean's not breathing. "Yes, we sent a transcript to the City
College of San Francisco at that time."
Dean exhales, flirts a bit more with the woman, and hangs up, muttering, "I am
so going to kill you when I track you down."
In the end, it's not that hard.
--
Dean gets a motel on the outskirts of the city, where it’s fractionally
cheaper, and sleeps for a few hours, until its dark outside and the traffic’s a
steady litany of noise coming in through the window. He showers, cleans up, and
heads for the Castro district. It’s been too long since he’s fucked or been
fucked by another guy, someone with lean muscles and hipbones that lead down to
a cock, someone who’s just as male, with stubble, who fights as they fuck.
John’s had Dean glued to his side ever since Sam left, as if John was afraid
that Dean would take off as well, no matter how many times Dean told him he
wasn’t going to, no matter how many ways Dean tried to prove it.
No surprise, then, that he took off with no hesitation at the first opportunity
John gave him, even if it was just going to Stanford to track Sam down for the
showdown with the demon. Still, Dean’s not going to turn down the gift fate
handed him, so he prowls the streets of the Castro like the best of them,
getting plenty of offers but not finding any he wants to take up.
When he can’t find what he’s looking for, Dean ducks into a bar, dim lighting,
hazy even with the ban on smoking, music low and pulsing. He walks to the bar,
asks for a couple shots of Jack and downs them, follows them up with a beer.
Turning, Dean leans against the counter, bottle in hand and leaking
condensation down the side, and surveys the crowd.
It’s mostly young twenty-somethings, half of them pretty, half of them macho,
all of them drunk. There’s a crowd on the dance floor, a few couples pressed
against walls, but Dean doesn’t see anything more risqué than some very
inspired frotting.
“Looking for something?” someone says next to Dean, and Dean turns, takes a
drink while he looks over the man next to him. About the same height as him,
deeper tan that screams surfer along with blond hair and eyes that must sparkle
like crazy in sunlight.
“I wasn’t expecting to find a beach bunny up here,” Dean says, and the man
laughs, the sound trickling into Dean’s ears and down his spine. Dean looks
away, back out at the crowd, and says, “And yeah, I am. I don’t think I’ve
found it yet.”
The man doesn’t seem to take offence at that, just has a sip of his own beer,
shifting so he’s leaning back against the bar just like Dean, following Dean’s
gaze. “Its not the best group tonight,” he admits after a minute. “But you’re
new here, yeah? I haven’t seen you in before. My name’s Ben.”
Dean looks over, raises his bottle in acknowledgement, finishes it, signals for
another. “Dean,” he says. “And you’re right, I’ve never been here before. In
and out of town, hopefully a quick visit. Thought I might find something
tonight, but.” He trails off, shrugs.
“Well, there’s one person guaranteed to make you happy,” Ben says, before
adding with a laugh, “And don’t worry, it’s not me.” He nods in the direction
of the dance floor, at a booth just on the edge, where one man’s sitting on
another’s lap. From what Dean can see, the two are kissing, and the man on top,
long and lean, with a neck Dean would love to see marked up, is moving up and
down.
“Who’s he?” Dean asks, shifting slightly.
Ben grins, says, “That’s Sam,” and Dean’s focus narrows.
--
“Shit, Sam, what the fuck’s gotten into you?”
Sam, on his knees, mouth full of Dean’s cock, answers by sucking harder,
swallowing Dean down a little deeper, hands placed on his own knees, not
otherwise moving. Dean wants to know why the hell Sam didn’t even bother taking
his coat off after bursting in the door from school, early, no less, which
meant he was skipping, before pushing Dean up against the wall and pulling out
Dean’s cock. Part of Dean wants to know, at any rate; the rest of Dean,
including his dick, is very much okay with this and might be running hands
through Sam’s hair, might be thrusting into that wet heat, might have started
muttering words less like questions and more like encouragement.
After Dean’s spilled down Sam’s throat, Sam leans back, looks up and barely
meets Dean’s eyes. Dean catches his breath, pulls Sam up and flips them around,
so Sam’s pressed against the wall. Sam swallows, looks over Dean’s shoulder, so
Dean grabs Sam’s chin and forces his brother to look at him.
“Seriously,” Dean says. “Not that I don’t appreciate it, but what the hell
happened?”
Sam swallows again, licks his lips, and Dean can see his brother’s Adam’s apple
jump before Sam says, “I heard,” stops, starts again, “Geena was talking to
some of her posse before lunch.”
Dean groans, lets Sam go, and stalks over to the couch, sits down heavily. He
hears Sam follow, footsteps just barely audible, because as tall as Sam’s
getting, he’s as graceful and light on his feet as a cat. “Geena’s a bitch,”
Dean says, and pats the couch next to him.
Sam hesitates, but sits down, a clear line of space between them, and doesn’t
look at Dean as he says, “Geena said,” before Dean cuts him off.
“Geena’s a bitch,” Dean says. Almost as an afterthought, he adds, “And she’s
got crabs.” Sam gives him a narrow-eyed look, and Dean shrugs. “Someone else
told me. Look, no matter what she says, I never did anything with her. She
wouldn’t have minded, but I said no, okay? I haven’t, with anyone, not since
we.”
He knows he’s stumbling over his words, must look as uncomfortable as he feels,
but Sam lies down, puts his head in Dean’s lap, and its better. They’re better,
even if Sam actually thought Dean would fuck around on him, even if Sam’s not
looking at Dean, body still tense as Dean runs his hands through Sam’s hair.
They’re better. They have to be.
--
It doesn’t look like his Sam, though there are resemblances. The hair’s the
right length but the wrong colour, the clothes aren’t at all anything like Sam
would wear and the body’s too skinny, but the glimpses of hands Dean gets sends
a pang through his chest that’s been hardwired to his cock since he was twenty.
“Guaranteed, huh?” he asks, and Ben laughs again.
“Best whore in the city. Expensive, and it’s fucking impossible to get an
appointment inside of four days, but Frankie?” Ben stops, turns around, and
Dean does as well.
The bartender’s looking at Ben, eyebrow raised as if it’s an answer.
“Frankie, you said Sam’s schedule’s open tonight?”
The bartender, who Dean’s just now noticing is wearing clothes more suitable
for a manager, even the owner, of a place like this, nods. “He had a couple of
appointments, but they cancelled. You thinking of taking one of them, Ben? It’s
been a while since you’ve had a taste.”
Ben turns to look at Sam, and then looks back at Frankie, shaking his head,
though Dean thinks Ben’s eyes seem vaguely glazed, pupils a bit wider. It could
be the light, but somehow, Dean doesn’t think it is.
“Maybe later, if he’s up for it,” Ben says, before wrapping an arm around
Dean’s shoulder. “This is Dean. He’s from out of town, looking for a good time.
Think Sam’d have him?”
Frankie’s eyes trace over Dean, lingering on Dean’s mouth, the hand wrapped
around the bottle of beer, sliding in the condensation. “You’d have to answer a
few questions, agree to follow the rules,” Frankie eventually says, “and we
expect payment in cash, in full, up front.”
“What kind of questions?” Dean asks, eyes flicking between the two men. All
this, just for a guy Ben called a whore? Still, no one else is remotely
interesting and if he’s as good as Ben says, well. “And what kind of money are
we talking, here?”
Ben grins, elbows Dean, and when Dean turns to look at him, says, “I’ll let you
two negotiate, hmm? Have fun, Dean, and if I’m still here when you’re done, let
me know if I was right,” before walking off.
Dean turns back to Frankie, sets the beer on the bar-top, and sits on one of
the stools. The questions come fast.
“Are you clean? When were you last tested? Have you ever been with another guy?
What are you into? What would you expect Sam to do?”
Dean answers all of them, and Frankie looks at him for a long, weighted moment,
before nodding.
“All right, yeah, you’ll do. How long would you want him for?”
Dean turns, lays eyes on Sam, sees the way the guy underneath him is wrung-out,
grinning, head thrown back on the chair, the way Sam’s leaning forward and
whispering something into his ear. “How much would two hours be?” Dean asks,
tearing his eyes away.
--
The price is high, but Dean’s got cash in his wallet, hard-earned hustling
money, and one more look at Sam, with those curls of hair brushing the nape of
his neck, two shades too light, even in the dim atmosphere, has him pushing it
across the bar.
Frankie takes the wad of bills, counts them, and puts the whole handful in a
lockbox on the other side, underneath a bottle of cloudy white liquid, no
label. He gestures, and one of the waiters comes to the bar immediately, eyes
sizing Dean up quickly. “Take Dean upstairs,” Frankie says. “And when he’s
settled, come back down and tell Sam he has a client.”
“You want me to make the run tonight?” the waiter asks, and Dean doesn’t
understand what the questions means, just sees Frankie nod and tilt his head in
the direction of the lockbox. It makes his skin crawl, something about that
exchange, but he follows the kid up a flight of stairs in the back, leaving the
low, pulsing music and the hum of the crowd downstairs.
--
It’s quieter upstairs, but there’s still a thrum of music every so often
vibrating the floor under Dean’s feet. The waiter, a kid who looks barely
legal, leads Dean left, down a narrow hallway, once they get to the top of the
steps. The hallway’s clean, well-lit, and there’s a door on one side marked
‘Private: Personal’ and one across from it marked ‘Private: Business.’ The kid
opens the latter, ducks his head inside, and then gestures for Dean to go in.
“Sam’ll be with you in a minute,” he says, as Dean walks in and studies the
bed, the sturdy-looking dresser with drawers and a tray of keys on top, the
manacles on the wall. There’s a window, looking over the street out front, and
as Dean crosses the room, suddenly uncomfortable, the kid asks, “Can I have him
bring you up a drink?”
Dean turns back, says, “Thanks, no,” and then finishes walking to the window,
looking out and seeing the reflection as the kid nods and closes the door
behind him.
It’s just Dean, the barely-there thump of the bass beat, and the sounds
filtering through the window from the street outside. He should feel
ridiculous, paying for a whore, but he remembers the sight of what he’s bought
for the next two hours and feels his cock start to swell. Fingers grip the edge
of the windowsill without conscious thought, turn white with pressure, as Dean
takes the image of the whore and overlays it with the mental image he’s kept
close, fallen asleep every night thinking of since the real one left. Sam.
Footsteps outside, and Dean stiffens, but the person goes into the other room,
must, because Dean hears a door creaking and it isn’t his. A minute or two
later and the door creaks again, and then there’s a knock on his door, light
and gentle.
“It’s open,” Dean says, voice thin, flat, and the door opens and the whore
walks in. The reflection isn’t clear, but he studies what he can see, makes a
mental comparison. The face is too thin, the cheekbones too pronounced, but he
can imagine what they’ll feel like under his hands. The clothes, they just
aren’t right, and from this side Dean can tell this Sam is far skinnier than
his own, heroin chic.
The door closes, and the man says, “Dean,” quietly, almost too quietly. Dean
jumps, almost turns around, then realises that Frankie knows his name, Frankie
and the waiter both, of course they’d tell the slut. The voice, it’s close,
almost too close, but not the same. Shredded, almost, and smokier, but Dean’s
cock is hard now, aching against the confines of his jeans, and he’s lost
feeling in his fingers.
“Frankie tell you what I want?” Dean asks, eyes flicking from the reflection of
Sam to the street below, two men making out on the other side, against the wall
of a sex shop. “Or do I get to say the whole thing again?”
Sam stands there, then moves; Dean tracks the reflection, drawn again to the
way that hair curls and flares out from the nape of Sam’s neck. Sam goes to the
dresser, opens a drawer and takes out a pair of handcuffs, plain silver, and
picks a key from the tray on top. He turns again, places them on the bed, and
then says, “Dean,” like the name means something.
Dean can’t help turning at that, mouth dry, and when he’s facing Sam, he
realises he’s facing his brother.
--
“I want you to fuck me.”
Dean almost laughs, but then he sees the look on Sam’s face, and the amusement
fades into something like suspicion. “What?” he asks, because he’s clearly
misunderstood something.
Sam crosses his arms, looks at Dean, shakes the bangs out of his hair, and says
it again, exactly the same. “I want you to fuck me.”
Dean blinks, says, “See, that’s funny, because I thought that’s what you said
the first time. Sam. Did someone put you up to this? Give you something? What’s
going on?”
Sam is fifteen, Sam is wearing a pair of jeans slung low on his hips and an
old, thin t-shirt that is stretched much too tight over his chest, and Sam is
saying it again, like he’s being completely serious. “I want you to fuck me.
How much clearer can I get? Your dick, my ass.” Sam is fifteen, Sam is Dean’s
only brother, and Sam is completely serious.
Dean sits down on the edge of the bed and considers the possibility that his
brother has gone completely batshit insane, ignoring the thin edges of want
curling in his belly.
--
“Sam,” Dean breathes, and stands there, frozen, unable to do more than say it
again, prayer and hope and curse. “Sam. You’re. It’s you.”
Sam gives him a little half-grin, runs one hand through his hair. “Should
fucking hope so,” he says, and it doesn’t sound like the Sam that Dean
remembers. “Otherwise I’m having one hell of an identity crisis.” One little
half-laugh, more jaded and cynical than Dean ever remembers Sam being capable
of, and then Sam shifts slightly, enough to attract Dean’s eyes to the hip
jutting out to one side, hand resting there, the toe-tap, the down tilt of
Sam’s chin, enough so that dyed hair falls over one eye and frames the other
one.
It’s a pose, a practiced one, and Dean sees red. He flies across the room,
smashes his lips to Sam’s, one hand curling around Sam’s head and sliding up
into that mop of colour-lightened hair and yanking, and he ignores the small
noise Sam makes against his lips, thrusts his tongue inside of Sam’s mouth and
uses his other hand to pull Sam’s body flush against his, fingers digging into
Sam’s ass. He doesn’t stop until Sam’s body is loose, pliant, and when he pulls
away, pulls back, Sam’s panting, a spot of red high in both of Sam’s cheeks.
“Why the fuck have you been whoring,” he demands, hands curling into fists at
his sides, trying to keep himself from taking out this anger on Sam. “Most
expensive slut in the city, that’s what I heard, Sam. Booked up for days, free
for the taking to the highest bidder. Tell me why.”
“I needed the money,” Sam says, and though he shrugs, though he smiles, his
eyes look dead.
Dean can’t help it, can’t stop himself. He lets one fly, and a moment later,
Sam’s stumbling back, one hand pressed against his nose, trying to stop the
blood trickling out. There’s already a bruise blossoming on Sam’s cheekbone,
but Dean doesn’t think Sam feels the pain at all.
“Why did you need the money, huh? What could be worth selling yourself?”
Sam doesn’t answer right away. Instead, he heads for the dresser, pulls open a
drawer and takes out a small hand towel, black, and presses it to his nose,
follows that up with antiseptic cream for the cheek.
Dean watches Sam’s face in the mirror above the dresser, and Sam’s eyes flick
to Dean just once, before Sam pinches his nose and waits for the bleeding to
stop.
When it does, Sam dabs the dried blood away and finally looks at Dean again,
dropping the hand towel in a garbage can next to the bed.
“Didn’t you ever wonder, Dean?” he asks, and when Dean raises an eyebrow as if
to say, No idea what you’re talking about, Sam says, “I did. You always told me
I was good, Dean, best piece of ass you ever had, best mouth, best at begging,
always willing to take it.”
“So, what,” Dean says, feeling his stomach sink. “You wanted to know if I was
right? Sam.” He trails off, almost at a loss. “Jesus, Sam, it wasn’t like that
and you know it. You know it.”
Sam slinks across the room, walks around Dean, trails two fingertips across
Dean’s shoulders, back, down one arm. There’s sex in the walk, sex in the
touch, and Dean’s painfully aware that he’s hard again, any arousal lost by the
revelation, by his anger, back along with more.
“I needed the money,” Sam breathes into Dean’s ear, and Dean can’t help the way
that breath, moist and intimate, makes his skin race. “This is what you told me
I was good at.” Another laugh, one that makes Dean’s skin crawl, and not in a
good way, and Sam says, “And, Dean, I am,” like he sounds proud of the fact.
He’s made one full circle of Dean, fingers grazing over the bulge in Dean’s
jeans before he backs away, almost as if he’s enticing Dean to follow, and Dean
takes one step before he shakes his head and stops.
“What happened to you?” Dean asks. “What happened to Stanford? All that you
left us for?”
“All that I left you for, isn’t that what you mean?” Sam asks. It doesn’t sound
at all like it hurts him to say that, and Dean swallows, has to look away when
he nods. “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather just fuck me? You paid for the
privilege.”
Dean stares at his brother, and Sam rolls his eyes, goes over to the bed, and
crawls up on it, plants himself with his back at the headboard, legs spread and
splayed out, head cocked in invitation. Another pose, but not one that Dean
outwardly reacts to. Inwardly, he feels like his life’s just been turned upside
down, like everything he thought he knew is wrong, except the need, the sheer,
utter compulsion, to fuck that smile off of Sam’s face.
“Tell me, Sam.”
Sam looks at him, then nods, leans back and reaches up with his hands, starts
playing with the top button of his shirt. “You were right, about Stanford. I
didn’t belong there, especially without any money. Oh, the full ride was nice,
but that didn’t cover anything but tuition and my dorm, and working a minimum-
wage job doesn’t exactly cover books and fees and clothes. I needed money, so I
came down here one night and auditioned for Frankie. Waiting tables, mostly, a
few quick blowjobs in the back for the better customers, and when the semester
was done, I transferred out, moved down here. The room across the hall’s mine.”
The top two buttons of Sam’s shirt are unbuttoned and Sam’s playing with the
third. Dean can see the sharp edge of Sam’s collarbone, can’t help but say,
“You’re skinny. You haven’t been this skinny since you were nine and shot up
six inches in a week.”
Sam’s fingers still for a moment, and as Dean watches them, far too graceful
for being so large, Sam says, “I’m a heroin addict, Dean.”
Dean opens his mouth, shuts it when nothing comes out but air.
“Started after I moved down here. There was a New Year’s party, one of my
clients dosed me up, and I was still numb the next day, didn’t mind it when one
of the others fucked me a little too hard. I don’t mind the pain as much now,
but I don’t feel like stopping the drugs, either. Everyone pays Frankie, and he
takes care of me, buys me clothes and h, I eat and drink here, I sleep across
the hall, and all I have to do is live up to my reputation.”
“Best whore in the city,” Dean murmurs, and Sam nods, undoes the next button on
his shirt, the last one, and tosses it off to the side. Dean’s eyes trace Sam’s
torso, the sharp ridges of bones, the long, lean lines of muscles still there,
the tanned skin and tattoo over Sam’s heart, Ad Libitum, in small, black
letters. His gaze dips lower, towards Sam’s belly button and the circle of
words around that, and he doesn’t have to get closer to read them.
--
Dean looks down, runs his hands across his stomach, and hisses in through his
teeth as his fingers graze the red flesh. It still seems unreal, and when he
looks up and sees Sam on the table, under the needles, a flush of heat runs
through his veins. “Why couldn’t you pick something shorter?” he asks, running
a finger around his belly button, through the words, the pain mixing with
pleasure.
“Because I liked this,” Sam replies, and Dean’s a little vindicated at the fact
that Sam sounds like he’s in the slightest bit of pain.
Dean looks down again, and though the words are upside down, he can still read
them, every letter, every crossed ‘t’ and dotted ‘i.’
Indivisibiliter ac inseparabiliter.
“Where’d you come up with this, anyway?” the tattoo guy says, as he finishes
the first word and starts the second. “I don’t see many people come in asking
for Latin.”
Dean starts to say something about being brothers, signing up for the Marines
or something, because Sam’s seventeen and fucking huge, and the tattoo guy
doesn’t need to know Sam saw it in one of his history books and liked it,
thought it suited them, what they have, what they are, convinced Dean this was
a good idea by blowing him stupid.
When they finish and get into the Impala, pull away from the shop, Sam leans
over and says, low and quiet, right into Dean’s ear, “I can’t wait to get my
tongue on it. Bet it’s all hot and aching; think I could cool it down? Distract
you from the pain?”
Dean drives faster, and Sam blows him on the way to their crappy little
apartment, mouth tight and wet and hot, and he’s right: it’s a good way to
distract Dean from the aching itch, but it’s better when he’s balls-deep in
Sam’s ass, listening to his brother beg and pant, feel him writhing underneath.
--
Sam’s jeans are tight. Dean remembers, from downstairs, seeing Sam on that
other guy’s lap, the way the denim molded to Sam’s ass, hugged hips. Sam never
wore tight jeans before.
Dean’s beginning to think that maybe he was right all along, that this Sam is
just a reflection of the one who took off at midnight from a place that wasn’t
nice, but was home, without telling anyone, calling them six hours later from a
payphone a couple hundred miles away.
Still, he can’t help it when Sam moves again, shifts, and the denim moves over
the line of Sam’s cock.
“You make a good whore,” Dean says, irrationally hoping to see that hurt Sam,
hit him somewhere just as painfully as his fist did.
Sam just shrugs, shakes his head so that the curls move, float in the air for a
moment, and says, “You told me that first. Ever think you might have a good eye
for spotting it?”
“You weren’t,” Dean snaps, and then deflates as Sam leans forward, those
muscles in his chest rippling, distracting him. “Before, when it was just us,”
and he rubs his stomach absently, fingers tracing the tattoo circling his belly
button. “You weren’t a whore, Sam. Not until you came out here and.”
“I was your whore, Dean,” Sam says gently, and he prowls down the bed, somehow
making it seem like it takes forever, though Sam’s still tall and the bed’s not
that big. “Only difference now is experience. You should see what I can do.”
Sam climbs off the bed, walks to Dean, and sinks to his knees in an achingly
slow movement, like he’s in a video and moving frame-by-frame. “I’ll show you,”
he breathes, and leans forward, presses his nose into Dean’s crotch.
Dean closes his eyes, clenches his hands into fists, and says, “Sam, I don’t.
You don’t,” but he doesn’t move, can’t move, as Sam’s mouth closes over the
button on Dean’s jeans.
It doesn’t take long, but there are nudges of Sam’s nose and chin, artfully
placed to make Dean’s heart stop and start a few times before the button pops
open and Sam starts dragging down Dean’s zipper tooth by tooth. The noise
echoes in the room, bounces up against the thump from the bass downstairs as
the music seems to change, get lower and deeper through the walls, the floor.
Sam mouths Dean’s cock through his boxer-briefs, his hands reach up to pull
Dean’s jeans off, and Dean doesn’t move a muscle, can’t breathe. He’s been
thinking about this ever since Sam left, dreamt about it, jerked off to
memories of it, but then Sam’s pulling down Dean’s boxers, and the air in the
room is cold, makes him shiver.
“You don’t have to do this,” Dean says.
Sam looks up at him, says, “You paid for it,” and scoots closer, rests his
hands on Dean’s hips, and swallows Dean’s erection down in one smooth motion.
It’s better than Dean remembers; Sam’s right about the experience. He’s using
his tongue and teeth together in a way Dean’s never felt before, pressure and,
fuck, it feels so good that Dean can’t help looking down, can’t help moving one
hand, letting his palm slide over Sam’s curls and rest on the back of Sam’s
skull.
Sam’s fingers trace something out over Dean’s hipbones and Dean feels his blood
explode, can’t stop the thrust into Sam’s mouth as his body finally realises
that this is Sam, Sam’s lips around his cock, Sam on his knees. The hand on
Sam’s skull clenches, tightens, and it’s like something’s taken over because
all he can think of is Sam’s mouth, fucking that wet heat and making it his,
spilling down Sam’s throat, coming so hard some of it dribbles out from Sam’s
lips, and he can’t stop his hips from moving.
Sam sits there, takes it and looks up at Dean, eyes framed by those
ridiculously long bangs, cheekbones prominent in shadow, and the look in his
eyes is still so dead, so blank. Dean growls, fucks his brother’s mouth with
abandon, hoping he can put something, some emotion or expression into those
eyes that used to be so animated, but then he’s coming, almost surprised, and
when he’s done, Sam just leans back and licks his lips.
“Was it good for you?” he asks, voice husky and raw, and when Dean can move
again, still feeling that strange, overpowering need to fuck Sam, he shoves Sam
backwards, until Sam hits the bed.
He sits with an “Oof,” and looks up at Dean, licks his lips, and slides
backwards, using his arms, legs open. Dean can’t take his eyes off of Sam, but
then he sees a flash of black on the inside of Sam’s arm.
Sam must see that Dean’s caught it, because he smiles and tilts his arm, shows
Dean the small ‘X’ just above the crook of his elbow, and says, “Y’know, for
every time I complained that it took so much to make your bruises show up on my
skin, I’m thankful for it now.” He lays back, toys with the button of his
jeans, and adds, “Everyone knows I ride the white horse and love it just as
much as I love riding their dicks. Some of them even like to watch me cook up
and shoot, Dean.”
He pauses, finally undoes the button, starts playing with the zipper, and
carries on, says, “What about you? Would you like to see me do it? Frankie
keeps the h downstairs, you probably saw the bottle.”
Dean thinks back, remembers that unlabelled bottle of cloudy white liquid above
the lockbox. It takes a moment of breathing to work through pure rage, and
register what Sam’s saying.
“…see the way the needle slides in, soft and smooth, the way it looks going
into me, and then coming out again, the drop of blood that wells up on my skin,
right in the middle of the ‘x.’ Sometimes I wipe it up and lick it away, if
that’s what people want, Dean.”
Dean can’t take it, not anymore, and he jumps onto the bed, moves up towards
Sam, grabbing the handcuffs along the way, and straddles his brother, locks
Sam’s hands into the cuffs, around the headboard.
Sam smiles, writhes underneath him, and says, “Now what’re you gonna do, hmm?”
He leans back against the pillows, lets his hands relax in the cuffs, and says,
“You gonna fuck me, Dean? It’s been a while, are you sure you can remember
how?”
“I think I can remember just fine,” Dean murmurs, before he bites down hard on
Sam’s collarbone and tugs the skin. Sam doesn’t react, except to blink at Dean
and sigh.
--
Dean stops, asks again, “Sam? Are you sure?”
Sam looks back over his shoulder, wiggles his ass, and says, “Just come on
andfuck me, Dean, God.”
It wasn’t so bad jerking Sam off, learning the weight and feel of Sam’s cock in
his hand, wasn’t even so bad licking his hand after Sam came, immediately
memorising the flavour of Sam in his mouth. It wasn’t even so bad when he had
two fingers up Sam’s ass, coated in lube and stretching his brother’s hole, but
now, looking down, condom packet in one hand, it just feels like this is one
line they shouldn’t be crossing.
Sam moves, and before Dean can fully pull himself out of his thoughts, Sam’s
taking the packet from Dean’s hand, opening it with his teeth and rolling it on
to Dean’s cock. That feeling, of latex and someone’s warm hands, makes Dean
groan, sway, and Sam pushes him onto his back, straddles him, and sinks down on
to him.
Dean can see Sam wince, and hears him mutter something, but then Dean’s inside
all the way, Sam’s panting, sitting there, getting used to the feeling of
Dean’s cock, and Dean’s hesitation disappears. When Sam lifts up, he tosses Sam
to the side and before Sam can protest, he’s got one of Sam’s legs over his
shoulder and his dick disappearing inside of Sam.
Sam makes this noise that Dean’s never heard before, from anyone he’s fucked,
and if he ever has to pick a moment later when he becomes addicted to Sam, this
is it.
--
Dean pulls the zipper of Sam’s jeans down and rips them off, unsurprised to see
that Sam’s not wearing any underwear. He takes a moment to study his brother’s
body, his earlier thought of ‘heroin chic’ coming back to haunt him at the
sight of Sam’s bones, not an extra ounce of fat anywhere on Sam’s frame, barely
enough muscle to keep good definition. Sam could stand to gain about fifty
pounds and he’d still be slender.
His blood hasn’t stopped pounding the demand to fuck Sam, though, so he says,
“Lube,” and doesn’t expect Sam to merely open his mouth, raise an eyebrow. Dean
shrugs, mutters, “If that’s the way you wanna play it,” and shoves two fingers
in Sam’s mouth, the wet suction going straight to Dean’s cock, as if those lips
are tight around his dick and not his fingers. Dean can’t help the shallow
thrust of his hips, and when Sam smiles around his fingers, he pulls them out
and presses one to Sam’s hole, pushing in past the resistance without slowing.
Sam arches, spreads his legs, pulls on the handcuffs, and looks so debauched,
lying there naked, colour flooding his cheeks, cock starting to take notice of
what’s going on, that Dean can’t help leaning forward and running his teeth
down Sam’s neck. Sam arches into the contact, clenches his muscles around
Dean’s finger, and looks at Dean, says, “Thought you’d be in a hurry.”
Dean takes out his finger, shoves both in, and growls when Sam doesn’t do more
than laugh.
“Not taking very good advantage of your two hours, are you?”
His pulse pounds, and he needs to wipe that look off of Sam’s face, so puts on
a condom, lines up, and sinks in all the way, without going slow, without being
gentle. It has to hurt, but Sam just smiles lazily, shifts under Dean. Dean
snarls, bares his teeth, and starts to fuck his brother.
In some distant part of his mind, below this driving need, this urge he can’t
control, he thinks it’s nothing like he’d imagined, the first time inside of
his brother in years. He’d thought it would be more gentle, or at least an act
that both of them were involved in, wanted, but Sam’s just laying there no
matter how hard Dean thrusts or how deep his fingers dig into Sam’s hips, and
he can’t get Sam’s words out of his head, that ‘You paid for it,’ like Sam’s
just a high-priced whore and Dean’s a client, no history, no feeling.
Sam’s tight; Dean didn’t think that would be possible after two and a half
years of lying down and taking it up the ass. He’s tight, and he’s closed his
eyes, though they open again after a long handful of minutes, after a pinch
perilously close to one of Sam’s nipples.
“Want you to see me,” Dean mutters, moving the bed with the force of his
pounding. “Want you to know who’s fucking you.” Sam starts to grin, opens up
that mouth to say something idiotic, no doubt, so Dean feels justified in
shoving three fingers in Sam’s mouth, ordering him to suck. It shuts Sam up,
and Dean’s shuddering, rhythm faltering, as Sam’s tongue darts between his
fingers, traces the curve of his nails, lays small, dancing points on his skin.
Dean comes, and when he’s done, pulled out, he unlocks the handcuffs, lies down
next to Sam, stares at the ceiling, and says, “I’ve still got an hour. Show me
what you’ve learned.”
--
Sam’s good. Maybe they’re right, maybe he is the best in the city, the best in
the fucking state, because by the end of the second hour, after Sam does things
Dean didn’t even know existed, he’s limp and wrung-out, boneless on the bed.
It’s as if all of his blood has finally stopped pumping and all he can do is
lie there, watch as Sam gathers up his clothes, puts all the used condoms in a
garbage can, drops all the toys in a big pile on the floor.
“Not gonna pick them up?” Dean asks, voice hoarse, throat in agony, because Sam
was never a neat freak before, but he didn’t just leave things lying around the
place, not when John could come back needing to be stitched up at any minute.
“Someone else’ll clean them and put them away,” Sam says, and then there’s a
knock on the door. Sam tilts his head at Dean, gives Dean a good long look at
the green bruise on his cheek, says, “Time’s up. Take as long as you need and
then head down,” and leaves.
The door closes behind Sam, a gentle little click of a latch, and Dean can hear
two people talking outside. He thinks they say something about marks, maybe,
and Dean shuts his eyes as he remembers. Two hours of Sam, two hours of sex,
his thumbprints, fingerprints all over Sam, imprints of teeth and nails
scattered over Sam’s body, the bruises everywhere. Dean wasn’t supposed to
leave marks, not that many, at least, and yet he did, couldn’t stop himself.
Across the hall, the door creaks open and then closed in rapid succession, and
footsteps echo down the stairs. Dean gets up, gets dressed, and walks out into
the hallway. He looks at the door to Sam’s own room, “Private: Personal,” and
considers knocking, but heads down the stairs. Frankie frowns at him, and Dean
slips away before Ben can cross the dance floor.
Once outside, Dean takes a deep breath, and then heads for the Impala, looking
back once. He thinks he sees Sam watching him from the window, but then he
blinks and the impression of a person is gone, was probably just someone
cleaning up the room, getting it ready for Sam’s next client. Dean scowls,
walks faster, and when he drives away from the bar, he doesn’t stop until he
hits Utah, greasing the way with coffee and the anger generated from lite-rock
station after lite-rock station, all of his music reminding him too much of his
brother.
***** Chapter 2 *****
Dean finds a motel and sleeps for fifteen hours. His body feels better
afterwards, rested, but still tight and sore in a way that reminds him of good
sex. That doesn’t make his mind any calmer, especially after the dreams,
watching Sam being fucked by faceless person after faceless person while Dean
was stuck behind a glass wall, unable to get to his brother, unable to do
anything but pound on the glass and scream.
A hot shower, a quick run to the nearest diner for food, and Dean feels
slightly human until he realises he never told Sam why he finally went looking
for his younger brother. With a muttered curse, Dean picks up his phone, calls
information, and when someone picks up the other end, Dean says, “I need to
talk to Sam.”
There’s a dry laugh, and Dean recognises Frankie’s voice at the reply. “Is this
Dean?”
“Look, cut the crap and let me talk to my,” he says, almost slipping before he
catches himself and says, “Sam. Let me talk to Sam.”
“Dean, you passed the boundaries we had established last night, by a large
amount. Luckily, there are people who prefer to see Sam marked up before their
appointments, but, otherwise, your actions could have lost Sam this evening’s
income,” Frankie says.
Dean huffs, resists the urge to start screaming, and says, “Let me talk to Sam.
He told you to pass my calls on to him, I know he did.”
There’s a pause, murmured voices, and then Sam’s on the other end of the phone.
“What is it, Dean? Are you looking to make another appointment?”
The sound of Sam’s voice makes Dean’s heart clench, the words make his vision
narrow. “I was trying to find you for a reason, Sam. I didn’t track you down
just to.” He stops, unable to put what happened the night before into words,
irrationally worried that if he does, if he says the words, they’ll make it all
real, the sex, Sam’s attitude and those dead eyes, the way he drove out of San
Francisco and kept going.
“Just to mark me up and fuck me raw?” Sam says lightly, far too lightly.
Dean exhales, lets his head drop, barely retains the hold he has on his phone.
“Yeah,” he breathes. Sam sounded, he knew what Dean was thinking, and Dean
breathes again as he realises that Sam’s changed, is this creature he doesn’t
at all recognise, and he himself hasn’t grown up at all in the three years
since Sam left.
“Sam, Dad has a lead on the demon,” Dean says. There’s silence, so Dean says,
“He knows where it’s going to be in a few days, less than a week. He told me to
come and get you, said there needs to be three of us there to take it out.”
Still silence, until Sam says, “And why does he think I want anything to do
with this? I left, remember?” There’s more murmuring on the other end, muffled,
as if Sam’s got one hand covering the phone; Dean can’t make out the words.
“Tell him whatever you want, Dean. I’m not going with you.”
“Wait, Sam, don’t hang up,” Dean bursts out before he can stop himself. “I’ll.
I’ll pay. For you to come with me. It’s only a week.”
“Dean,” Sam says, almost gently, “you can’t afford me. Let me know when it’s
done.”
All Dean can hear for an hour is the side of the dial tone after Sam hangs up
on him.
--
They’ve come back to the motel from a hunt, after a poltergeist in an old house
has thrown them through a few walls, dumped a few pieces of furniture on top of
them. John’s already asleep, exhausted after three days of tracking the son of
a bitch down instead of sleeping and then the fight, and Dean’s straddling the
toilet, letting Sam stitch up his back.
Dean’s already showered, rinsed the blood and dust off, and Sam’s silent,
pulling needle and thread through the longest and deepest gashes on Dean’s
back, courtesy of a window with edges of jagged glass. Sam has already doused
every piece of broken skin with holy water and peroxide, bandaged Dean up, and
when he ties the last knot, cuts the thread, he puts everything away and leaves
the bathroom without saying a word.
Dean is tired, aches, and he can feel the painkillers start to kick in when he
stands up and follows Sam to the bedroom they’re sharing. “Sam, come on, I’m
the one,” he starts, but Sam shakes his head.
“You wouldn’t be hurt if you hadn’t jumped in front of me,” Sam says. “If the
force-field hit me, I would’ve been thrown against a wall, a wall that wasn’t
covered in glass shards. Besides, we all know I heal faster than you.”
At something of a loss, Dean says, “I didn’t realise there was a window there.”
Sam whirls around, so fast it almost makes Dean dizzy just watching. Sam looks
angry, furious, and he sounds even worse when he says, “So, what? You’re just
gonna act without thinking of the consequences all the time?” A bitter laugh,
and then, “You’re an idiot, Dean, and you’ve only gotten worse since we started
fucking. Stop treating me like glass. I’m not going to break.”
Dean sits on the bed, painkillers making him woozy, and he looks up at Sam,
trying to find the words to say how much he wants to protect Sam, how much he
wants to keep Sam safe, and not being able to, it kills him, he’ll go through a
million windows before he’ll do anything to cause Sam pain.
Except then Sam’s kneeling between his legs, hand on Dean’s cheek, and Dean
realises he’s just said all of that out loud. Sam doesn’t look angry anymore,
an improvement, but he looks sad now, like he’s almost ready to cry.
“Lie down and try to sleep,” Sam says, and so Dean shifts, closes his eyes, and
lays there, wide awake and stoned out of his mind, until Sam sighs and crawls
into bed next to him, curls around Dean.
When the ring of the telephone wakes Dean up in the morning, the sun’s shining
in through the window, and Sam’s gone.
--
For the first time in Dean’s life, John answers his phone after three rings.
“Dean, where are you two?”
Dean’s mouth, already dry, now feels like the Sahara, and he swallows, speaks
through it. “It’s just me, Dad. Sam’s not coming.”
Silence, eerily similar to the silence Dean got from Sam, and he wonders, not
for the first time, how his father and brother never saw how alike they really
are.
“What do you mean, not coming?” John asks.
“He’s not coming,” Dean says again. It’s not an answer, and he knows it, but
he’s not about to tell John about Sam, what Sam’s like now, what Sam’s doing
now. “Where should I meet you?”
“Dean,” John says.
Dean cuts him off before he can say anything else. “I told him, Dad, told him
and told him you wanted him there. He’s not coming, that’s all, that’s it.”
John sighs, the sound tinny over the mobile connection, and finally says,
“Three days in Missouri. There’s a place just south of Eldon on Highway 54,
small town with one motel. I’ve already reserved a couple rooms. I’ll swing by
and pick up Caleb on my way. If you get there first, it’s in the usual name.”
“I tried, Dad,” Dean whispers after a few seconds.
He thinks John’s already hung up, but then an echoing whisper comes back, an,
“I know, Dean. I know,” before the call ends.
It’s small consolation that John sounds just as desolate as Dean feels, just as
kicked aside and unwanted.
--
Dean calls the bar again the next day, when he’s halfway through Colorado.
Frankie answers, says that Sam’s busy, and hangs up on Dean.
One hundred and fifty miles later, Dean calls back, and this time Frankie
reluctantly puts Dean on hold. When it rings through to what must be Sam’s
phone, Dean has to pull over, park the Impala on the side of the road.
“Yes?”
It’s a simple question, one word, but Dean hears smoke and sex in that one
syllable, the promise of pleasure. His pulse skyrockets, his mind dredges up a
memory of Sam on his knees, Sam underneath him, the flash of light on silver
handcuffs, and Dean’s glad he’s pulled over because all the blood in his body
rushed south and he’s painfully hard inside his jeans. Dean presses his palm
against his dick, willing himself to focus.
“It’s me. Are you.”
Sam laughs, and the sound makes Dean’s cock twitch. “You can’t tell me it’s
done already,” Sam says, “so it must be that you miss me. Is that it, Dean? You
want to be back here fucking me into the floor?”
A mental image of that crowds Dean’s brain, until it’s all he can think of.
Sam, on his hands and knees, ass in the air, stretched wide and open for Dean,
and Dean moving in and out, watching as Sam’s skin gets redder and redder,
carpet burn on his knees, bite-marks and bruises all over Sam’s body, the
noises Sam makes when he’s getting fucked good and hard, the smell of salt and
sweat gliding in beads over slick bodies.
Dean doesn’t realise his jeans are open and he’s jerking until Sam says, low
and rich, “Yeah, Dean, that’s it. Just like that, but harder, faster,” and Dean
doesn’t know what’s going on, whether that’s the Sam he’s imagining or the Sam
on the other end of the phone, if he’s making up the words or if Sam’s really
saying them. “Come on, Dean, harder,” and it doesn’t matter, because Dean’s
breath is stuck and then it’s spiralling and he’s coming, shooting all over his
hand, the Impala’s steering wheel, the dash.
“Fuck,” he breathes, blinks, and the image in his head is gone.
“Maybe when you get back,” Sam says, “if you’re good.” There’s a pause, and
Dean hears a lighter flick, hears something start to bubble. “Try not to get
yourself killed,” Sam says dryly, and hangs up.
--
John doesn’t say anything when Dean finally knocks on the motel room door in
Missouri, circles under his eyes and his shoulders slumping, just opens the
door and gives his son a one-armed hug. Over John’s shoulder, Dean sees Caleb
sitting at the table, sharpening up a knife.
Caleb gives Dean a nod, then stands up, stretches, and says, “Gonna run down to
that hardware store we saw, John, ‘nd see if I can’t scare me up a new
whetstone.”
Dean knows it’s to give them space, time to talk about family stuff, things
unrelated to the hunt, and he appreciates it, smiles thinly as Caleb disappears
out the door and shuts it behind him.
John sits on the edge of the bed, looks up at Dean, and asks, “What happened,
Dean?”
“You don’t want to know,” Dean replies, striding over to the little coffee pot,
pouring himself one of those motel-sized Styrofoam cups and downing it with a
wince; tastes like shit. He hasn’t looked at John, and either that, or the way
Dean’s holding his shoulders, or the way Dean sounds, means John merely hums,
looking at Dean, the weight of his gaze burning holes in Dean’s shoulder.
“He’s alive,” John half-asks, half-says.
Dean thinks of Sam’s dead eyes, Sam covered in cuts and bruises, Sam lying
beneath him, not moving, the ‘x’ on Sam’s arm, and wonders if that’s any way to
live. “Yeah,” he says, and meets his father’s eyes.
John nearly recoils, says, “Dean? What is it?” and Dean feels a sharp pang of
bitterness. John’s faced down demons from the seventh level of Hell without a
second thought, gone after a pack of werewolves led by a former friend, jumped
into a river after a siren with nothing but a knife held between his teeth, and
yet the way Dean looks, because of Sam, makes him flinch.
“I’m going back there, once this is done,” Dean says, not a question, not a
request.
John’s eyes narrow, and he says, “Dean, if Sam’s in trouble,” letting the
sentence trail off. Dean can’t help the laugh, the way he sounds, as he pours
another cup of coffee. “Dean, if your brother’s in trouble,” and he sounds as
if he’s willing to call this whole thing off and go after Sam right now.
“He’ll be fine.”
“You swear?” John asks, fierce.
Dean turns around, can’t help glaring as he spits out, “You don’t believe me?
Wanna go see Sam, see what he’s doing these days, fine, but don’t say I didn’t
try and warn you.”
John studies that, as if the answers are etched on Dean’s face in between the
worry lines on Dean’s forehead and the crinkles at the edges of his eyes,
carved in by aches that Dean’s glad his father doesn’t understand.
“Why did you want him here, anyway?” Dean asks, calming himself or trying to.
“It’s not like he’d be any good after three years of not hunting.”
John just shakes his head, and then John’s phone rings, a contact from Iowa,
and the conversation is done, neither of them getting answers to their
questions.
--
The demon’s there, just like John said it would be, going after another child
in its crib. The parents, though, know the truth about what’s out there, and
they let John trace out a Devil’s Trap on the ceiling around the crib, let the
three men hide in the house and wait. When they smell sulfur, John starts
reading a Sumerian binding ritual out of an old grimoire, Caleb shoots a runed
bullet out of a gun that Dean’s never seen before, and a few splashes of holy
water later, the baby’s gurgling in the crib and the demon’s gone.
Gone, just like that, after twenty five years, and it feels so anticlimactic as
Dean stands there, empty bottle in hand, staring at a slightly charred circle
of carpet, the only evidence of the demon left, that and the sense that
something wasn't right, that the demon expected someone else instead of Dean
when it saw him.
John rests a hand on Dean’s shoulder, and when Dean looks up at his father,
John’s smiling. “We got it,” he murmurs, squeezes Dean’s shoulder. John laughs,
almost in disbelief, and says it again. “We got the son of a bitch.”
The baby’s parents are laughing, Caleb’s letting out whoop after holler after
shriek of triumph, and John’s eyes are gleaming.
Dean looks again at the floor, that piece of carpet, and then turns, feels his
pulse beat, heavy and sluggish. He makes it to the top of the stairs before
John calls out after him.
“Dean,” John says, earnest and low, looks as if he’s torn between celebration
and worry. “I’ll come with you, if you want. To tell him.”
“It’d be better if you didn’t,” Dean says, and leaves the house.
--
“Wanna hear you,” Dean murmurs, leaning and biting Sam’s shoulder, rolling his
hips again, burying himself deeper into his brother. “Wanna hear you beg, make
you scream.”
Sam’s shaking underneath him, all of his muscles tight and trembling,
fluttering under Dean’s lips, Dean’s hands. His hands, pressed against the
wall, slip, and Dean smacks him, open palm to Sam’s hip, surprising a yelp out
of Sam’s mouth that sounds just as natural as the groans had a moment before.
“Told you not to move them,” Dean says, smacks Sam again, mouths the skin of
Sam’s back when Sam tilts his head back and moans. He tastes like salt and
limes, bitter and layers of tang that burst in Dean’s mouth, a smoother drink
than tequila, richer and deeper.
When Dean’s teeth bite down, dig in and break skin, Sam keens, shakes again,
and starts to plead, broken words strung together that don’t make sense but
sound like music to Dean’s ears.
“…please, Dean, need you, please, fuck me, fuck me hard,please,” over and over
again, bound between high keening noises and shallow breaths.
“Mine,” Dean growls, hands gripping Sam’s hips, pulling his ass back so Dean
can pound harder. “You’remylittle whore, aren’t you, Sam? All mine.”
Sam falls apart underneath him, comes with Dean’s name on his lips, and even
with Sam’s muscles clenching and relaxing around him, even with the sudden
sharp smell of come scenting the air, Dean says, “Tell me, Sam.Tell me.”
It’s not until Sam says it, a little, choked statement, “Yours, Dean,” that
Dean comes, spilling hot and damp inside of his brother.
--
Dean’s in Kansas when he can’t take it anymore, three days without his brother
and he feels like he needs to have Sam there, to hear his voice or press his
hand against Sam’s chest, feel his brother’s heartbeat. He presses the speed-
dial for the bar, Frankie answers, and Dean asks for Sam.
“He’s busy,” Frankie says. There’s a pause, and then Frankie says, sounding a
little like Sam does now, all sly smoothness, “I could put you on the
speakerphone.”
Taken aback by the tone, Dean only pauses for a second before he says, “Yeah.
Put me on speakerphone.”
There’s a tinny laugh over the connection, then a moment of static-filled
silence, then sounds that Dean doesn’t recognise but doesn’t interrupt, voice
stolen.
A thwack, sharp and cracking, followed by a noise halfway between pain and
pleasure. Two more strikes, and then a murmured, “More, c’mon, know you have
more.”
Dean nearly swerves off the road as he realises. A belt, whip, something, and
the sound it makes hitting a body. Hitting Sam, and Dean remembers the manacles
on the wall, the number of drawers on that dresser, and how Sam lingered over
one but never opened it.
“Sam,” he whispers, but either the call’s muted so they can’t hear him, or the
cracks of the whip hitting Sam over and over again drown him out. It goes on
for so long that he has to pull over, has to close his eyes and rest his
forehead on the steering wheel, and he holds his breath when there’s silence.
A hiss, and then a twinned pair of sighs, and the unmistakable sounds of two
people having sex, and Dean hangs up, unable to keep listening.
He’s hard.
He drives a little faster.
--
Dean stops for sleep in Springfield, Colorado. He’s been lying in bed for an
hour now, tossing and turning, can’t help thinking of Sam, feels like his skin
is too tight, too hot. Finally, Dean reaches for the phone on the nightstand
and calls the bar again. It’s late, he’s not expecting an answer, but someone
picks up.
“We’re closed, Dean.”
“How the fuck did you know it was me?” Dean asks, momentarily freaked, because
that’s just not natural, but then Sam says something about caller ID and stable
phone numbers, and Dean learns how to breathe again.
“Is it done?” Sam finally asks, and Dean can almost hear the wince in his
brother’s voice as it sounds like Sam’s moving. “Because if this is just a
booty call, let’s get it over with so I can get to bed, all right?”
Dean rolls his eyes at the ceiling, but merely hearing Sam’s voice, Sam’s
breathing, calms him, settles something inside of him and makes something else
wake up. He shifts, hisses when the scratchy motel sheet moves against his
cock. “It’s done,” he says. “The demon’s gone. I’m on my way back there.”
Sam laughs and something inside of that sound moves.
Dean sits up, but his blood’s boiling and he’s hard. His head thunks back
against the headboard, and a murmured, “Oh, fuck,” escapes his lips.
“Like I said, Dean: when you get back. A celebratory fuck, since you survived,”
Sam says. “I won’t even charge you for it.”
“Too fucking kind,” Dean mutters, trying to ignore the pressing need to jerk
off, to find someone and fuck them, the need for Sam, Sam’s mouth or ass, it
doesn’t matter which.
Sam laughs into the phone, and it’s like the sensation of air ghosts over
Dean’s cock; he shivers, feeling it. “D’you like that, Dean?” Sam asks. “Being
able to call me, schedule a fuck, know that I’m yours again and can’t say no?
C’mon, touch yourself. Wanna hear it.”
Dean shivers again, and no matter how much he tries to stop himself, his free
hand goes down, circles his dick, starts to jerk. “Sam,” he says, and when his
thumb sweeps across the slit, he arches, headboard banging once against the
wall.
“There it is,” Sam says, gently, coaxing. “Come on, Dean, do it again. I want
to hear you, and then I want to hear you come. You can do it.”
He can’t stop, urged on by Sam’s words, low and smoky, fading into a background
of noise as Dean jerks, arching, legs spreading under the sheet, eyes closed.
It’s almost like someone else’s hand is on his dick, and Dean can’t help it,
gives in to the sensation, giving Sam what his brother asked for, noise first,
and then his orgasm a few minutes of stretched-out agony later.
“Sam,” he says, once he’s caught his breath. “Sam, I.”
“I have clients the next two nights, so take your time.”
This time, Dean flings his phone at the wall when Sam hangs up.
--
Dean tries, he really does, but the next night, after stopping a couple hours
down the road to deal with an infestation of canotila, he calls the bar again.
Frankie answers, says, “You need to stop calling Sam,” like it’s that easy,
like Dean can just stop now that he’s found his brother again. “He hasn’t said
it bothers him yet, but the second it does, I’m getting a restraining order.”
“He gets a kick out of it,” Dean says, tired and sore, “and so do you. If
you’re done, can you forward me on?”
“Sam’s entertaining clients,” Frankie says after a minute. “He’s not here and
he won’t answer his phone. You’ll get voicemail.”
Dean says that’s all right, and when Frankie transfers him, the phone rings
three times before Sam’s message picks up.
“This is Sam. Leave a message.”
It’s brusque, to the point, and yet somehow Sam’s infused sex and anticipation
into those six words, enough to make Dean’s cock pay attention, enough to make
Dean groan as he shifts and pulls on already-aching muscles.
At the beep, he says, “Sam, this is Dean. Listen, I just. Hey. You have
clients, but you aren’t at the bar? Are you okay?” and he suddenly feels
stupid, because nothing about what Sam’s doing these days is remotely okay.
“Never mind. I just wanted you to know that I’m on my way. I’ll be there in two
days. During the day. I’m not sure if the bar’s,” he says, and then gets cut
off by the beep.
Dean stares at his phone, and says, words echoing in the silent room, “Even
when you’re not there, you still find a way to hang up on me, huh? Bitch.”
He takes a shower, as hot as his skin can stand it, and when he’s turned,
letting the water pound his back, he closes his eyes, inhaling the steam. A
deep breath, and Dean’s dizzy, puts one hand on the wall to steady himself, and
when he opens his eyes, blinking rapidly, as if that will stop the room from
spinning, he swears he hears Sam in the motel room, beyond the bathroom door.
The words don’t make sense, but he can’t help it, can’t help letting one hand
drift down and circle his dick, tug once, long and slow. “Like that, Dean,” he
can almost hear, as if Sam’s there, right outside the shower curtain, but when
Dean pulls it back, it’s just him.
Dean shakes his head, turns the shower off and dries himself cursorily before
collapsing into bed stark naked and falling straight to sleep.
--
Dean wakes up, heart racing and sheets, skin damp. He shifts, looks down at the
wet spot, then at his cock, before shaking his head. He takes another shower,
this one warm but not as hot as the one last night, and as the water works out
the kinks in his muscles, he jerks off. Dean tries not to think of Sam, tries
to think of Cassie, or that one waitress in Missouri, or the time a guy went
down on him in a club outside of New York City, but it all comes back to Sam.
He imagines the feel of Cassie’s skin under him, and remembers the way Sam
writhed and panted, skin damp and sliding over Dean’s. He imagines waitress
after waitress, soft curves and bodies shorter, more forgiving, than his own,
but he thinks of Sam years ago, when they started fucking, and how good it felt
to fuck someone the same height, with the same unyielding intensity.
Dean tries to dredge up every memory of every cock he’s sucked, every dick he’s
had in his ass, every ass he’s been in, but it all comes back to Sam, Sam on
his knees, Sam riding him, Sam fucking himself on Dean’s fingers, Sam’s tongue
sliding in and out of him, and when Dean comes, it’s with his brother’s name on
his lips.
The water rinses away every trace of come down the drain, and Dean shuts the
shower off when he’s clean, stands dripping wet in front of the small, steamed-
over mirror, and wonders just how badly he’s fucked over. The face staring back
at him doesn’t answer; Dean hadn’t been expecting one, but he can’t keep
looking at himself, can’t stand to look, and his fist is flying into the mirror
before he registers movement. It stings, small pieces of glass hooked in his
skin, blood welling up from the cuts, but it’s not enough to cut through the
haze driving Dean back to Sam, that uncontrollable urge to get back to Sam now.
Dean cleans his hand up, dresses, and leaves the mess in the bathroom like it
is.
--
“Hello?” Dean says, having finally found his phone and figured out how to open
it. He hates waking up with a painkiller hangover, the way it makes his mind
fuzzy and warps every command sent from his brain to the rest of his body, but
he’s found the phone and stopped the ringing, and that’s the most important
thing.
“Hey, Dean.”
Dean’s eyes fly open and he winces at the light flooding the room, east-facing
window and no one closed the blinds last night, “Shit. Sam? What time ‘s it?”
“Just after six,” Sam says, and then adds, “Your time.”
Dean sits up, heart stopped, and he looks around the room. Sam’s bed, the one
neither of them have slept in for weeks, is made, pristine the way their father
likes it. The folded up pile of clean laundry is gone, as are the last three
books Sam’s been reading, Sam’s knife-kit, and what looks like one of the guns.
It’s a prank. It has to be.
“Where are you?” he asks, heart in his throat, stomach not too far behind,
because Sam’s never done this before and it’s not funny, not in the slightest
bit.
“Not there,” Sam replies, and his voice sounds blank, empty.
Dean shakes his head, stands up, unsteady, and wobbles out of the bedroom, down
to the kitchen and living room. “Sam, s’not funny. Come on, where are you? And
what are you doing up so early?” Not in the kitchen, though an empty box of
knock-off granola bars is lying side-down on the rackety table.
“I just wanted to let you know that I’m not coming back.”
Dean trips over a chair, hears muttered cursing coming from the next room as
John wakes up at the noise.
“I left last night, once you passed out, and I’m not coming back. Tell Dad
whatever you want. I.” A long pause, as if Sam’s struggling to say something or
to hold something back, and then a repeated, “Tell Dad whatever, I don’t care.”
The dial tone, and Dean doesn’t realise he’s sitting on the floor, staring at
that empty box, until John’s shaking his shoulders.
“Dean! Snap out of it, come on,” and John’s right there, in front of him, looks
worried and upset, especially when Dean just looks at him, unable to feel
anything but numb and cobwebbed. “What is it?”
Dean shakes his head, blinks and focuses on his father, and says, “Sam’s gone.
He’s not coming back.”
He should feel gratified by how quickly John pales, how John searches his eyes
and then shakes his head in denial, leaves and starts searching the house.
He should, but he doesn’t.
***** Chapter 3 *****
It’s noon when Dean pulls up in front of the bar. It’s a no-parking zone, but
there’s an alley right next to it, and that’s where he parks the Impala, blocks
in one of those foreign imports that gets zillions of miles to every half-
gallon and looks vaguely ridiculous doing it.
The door’s open but the bar’s empty, and Frankie’s behind the counter, writing
what looks like an order for more liquor when Dean gets closer.
Frankie grins up at him, fox-smile under snake-eyes, watching Dean for any sign
of weakness, which is a waste of time because they both know that him being
here, that’s all the weakness anyone will ever need to exploit.
“He got your message,” Frankie says, looking back down at his order, as if Dean
isn’t worth his attention.
Any other bar, any other city, Dean would challenge that, make Frankie notice
him, but here, now, so close to Sam that Dean’s blood is practically humming in
anticipation, he just says, “Is he upstairs?”
Frankie chews on the end of a pen, adds another line of writing to the order,
and when Dean’s almost ready to forget this and just go up, Frankie says, “The
other room. Knock first, he gets tetchy.”
Dean raises an eyebrow, but doesn’t waste time standing around, not when Sam’s
upstairs. This time, he takes the steps two at a time, and quickly finds
himself in front of the other door, the one marked ‘Private: Personal,’ the one
Sam said was his own room. He lifts a hand, pauses, then knocks once, twice,
and waits.
“It’s open,” Sam calls out from inside, and Dean touches the doorknob, feeling
the light charge of static electricity as he turns it, opens the door. He walks
in, closes the door behind him, and stares, taking in the room Sam calls his
own.
The room’s small but clean, almost immaculate. A futon doubles as a bed, pushed
against one corner, and there’s a small closet, door closed, next to it. Sam’s
sitting cross-legged on the floor, next to a low coffee table, covered by a
piece of blue fabric that’s so shimmery it looks black. Still, the fabric
doesn’t hit the floor, and Dean can see the very bottom edges of books, old
books, hidden underneath.
Dean takes another step inside and stops as the smell hits him, sage, lavender,
and something else, something he doesn’t recognise until he looks at his
brother, Sam’s glazed-over, empty eyes, and says, “What, did you just shoot
up?”
Sam smiles, a predatory look, and Dean crosses the room and sits on the futon,
legs splayed apart, trying to pretend as if he owns the room and failing
miserably. Dean looks around again, notes the prints on the wall, abstract
splotches of paint that don’t mean anything to him, the thin carpet under his
feet, cheap but clean, and the lack of anything that looks like it might be
there for fun, something related to an interest or a hobby.
“Pretty boring,” Dean says, aiming for casual, and meets his brother’s eyes,
biting back a wince at the look they hold.
“It’s enough,” Sam says, and moves slightly, leans back on the floor. Dean’s
eyes are drawn to a thin strip of skin visible between a tight t-shirt and the
pair of stonewashed jeans that Sam’s wearing before they flick upwards, take in
that ‘x’ on Sam’s arm.
It still kills him, the idea that Sam’s an addict, that Sam would’ve rather
done that than ever called his family, and before he can stop himself, he asks,
“Why’d you leave?”
“Why did I leave, or why did I leave like that?” Sam asks, and stands up,
rising upwards like a sleek cat, all light and grace and free-flowing angles.
Dean’s eyes follow, mesmerised, track Sam’s movements as Sam walks to the door
and locks it, walks back and sits on the other end of the futon, giving off
enough warmth that Dean can feel it.
“The first,” Dean says, then adds, “Both, I guess? Sam, you left in the middle
of the night and you called. Why’d you call?”
Sam laughs, sharp cutting noise, and says, “If I hadn’t said anything, you and
Dad would’ve assumed something came to get me and spirited me away. You
wouldn’t have stopped looking until you found me, no matter how well I hid my
tracks. It was easier to call,” and Dean can’t believe his brother just said
that.
“It was easier?” Dean asks, shocked. “To leave without telling us, to call me,
six hours later, and just say, ‘Oh, by the way, I’m not coming back?’ Fuck
that, Sam, there’s more to it than that.”
“You think so highly of me,” Sam murmurs, and leans over, trails one finger
down Dean’s cheek, across the line of Dean’s jaw, around the curve of his chin.
“Foolish to think so highly of a whore, Dean. We say whatever we get paid to
say.”
Sam’s body follows his finger, and before Dean knows which way is up, Sam’s
sitting on his lap, curled around Dean, feet kicked off to one side and one arm
behind Dean’s shoulders. The other’s skittering across Dean’s chest, and when
sharp fingernails catch on a nipple, Dean hisses, lifts his arms and holds Sam
closer, tighter.
Sam sighs, scoots back far enough to lean his head onto Dean’s shoulder, and
when he talks, his breath ghosts over Dean’s ear, sinks into the skin behind
Dean’s earlobe.
“I left because I couldn’t stay,” he murmurs, and while Dean’s trying to listen
as hard as he can, because, God, he’s finally getting some answers, one hand’s
rubbing Sam’s knee, moving up higher on Sam’s leg as if it’s drawn to Sam’s
cock as much as the rest of him is screaming to fuck Sam, being this close to
him.
“I left in the middle of the night because I never slept well after hunts and
because both of you did. I was quiet, but it wouldn’t have mattered if I hadn’t
been, not with you high on painkillers and Dad passed out. I hitched a ride,
and when they dropped me off, I stole a car, and when I ran out of gas, I
called you, and when I was off the phone, I blew a trucker behind a seedy
little sex shop on the side of the road in exchange for five hundred miles of
interstate.”
Dean takes a moment to react to that, then his fingers are digging into Sam’s
jeans, Sam’s legs. “You,” he says, can’t force out any more words.
Sam laughs, a little puff of air against Dean’s neck. “He told me I was good,”
Sam says. “Said that whoever trained me knew what he was doing, and asked if I
was running away from my daddy. He was a twisted bastard, but he kept his side
of the bargain.”
The hand around Sam’s waist shapes into a claw without Dean thinking about it,
not until Sam whimpers, shifting against him, cock a clear line under Sam’s
jeans. “Sorry,” Dean says, loosening his hold.
“No need to apologise,” Sam replies, and shifts, straddling Dean, teeth nipping
at Dean’s jaw, tongue tracing out the map-pattern of freckles on Dean’s cheeks.
He grinds down, and Dean arches up. As Dean’s mind breaks into fractals of Sam
and sensation, Sam keeps talking, mouth carving furrows of lips and tongue and
teeth on to Dean’s face and neck, mouthing Dean’s shoulders through Dean’s
shirts, between words.
“I left because I couldn’t stay. Watching you kill yourself to protect me,
watching Dad kill anything he had to, everything he could, to get answers that
never came. I couldn’t do it, Dean, not a day longer, and I took my chance when
it came.”
Dean blinks, lets one hand rest on the curve of Sam’s ass, bumping and grinding
against him, the other curled and tucked in the waistband of Sam’s jeans. It’s
easier to ignore the first reason for now, so Dean says, “What do you mean,
watching Dad kill for answers?”
Sam laughs, and this time the sound is mocking, insulting even, but Dean
doesn’t take it back, merely asks again.
“Oh, Dean,” Sam says, licking a long, wet stripe up Dean’s jaw, from chin to
eyebrow. “So innocent, such the perfect soldier.” His hands are warm, almost
burning, as they climb up under Dean’s shirt, against his chest, spreading fire
everywhere they touch. “You never wondered, did you. Never put it together,
where we were, what Dad was doing all the time when he wasn’t dragging us
hunting in the middle of night, taking us out of school halfway through the
year.”
“What are you talking about?” Dean asks, and Sam sucks Dean’s neck. The
vibration of Sam’s laugh makes Dean’s toes curl in his boots.
--
“You’re not leaving,” John says, and though Dean’s relieved his father’s taken
such a strong stand on the issue, he knows that look on Sam’s face, what it
means.
“If I ever wanted to?” Sam asks, pressing the issue. “If I ever did?”
John juststaresat him, and replies, “Don’t come back.”
It’s a threat and a promise both, that Sam better understand what John’s saying
and better not run away without good reason and without expecting hell when he
gets sick of it and comes back. From the terse nod Sam gives their father, Dean
thinks Sam does.
Sam leaves the room and it’s like the tension in the kitchen has halved just
like that, even though John’s sitting down now, collapsed into a chair like his
knees aren’t strong enough to keep him standing, like Dean’s not even there,
letting Dean see this moment of pure and deep private grief.
“Dad?” Dean whispers, because he has no idea what just happened, whether he
should stay here or go after Sam, throttle his brother for even thinking of
leaving.
John shakes his head, cradles his face in his palms, elbows on the table, and
Dean sees the glint of light against his father’s dog tags, against the ring on
his left hand. He thinks, in that moment, that John’s never looked more like a
soldier, forgotten by the people he’s sworn to protect and abandoned by the
very family that’s supposed to love him.
“Dad?”
“Don’t leave him alone, Dean. Don’t leave him alone, and whatever you do, keep
him safe.” John takes a ragged breath, and shakes his head again. “God’s sake,”
he says, low and pleading, “whatever it takes, Dean. Keep him safe, whatever
you have to do.”
Dean’s heard that all his life, doesn’t know why hearing it now makes him
shiver, puts fear into his spine and speed into his feet, sends him almost
running after Sam, his little brother, his lover.
--
Dean’s come in his jeans, just from the feeling of Sam’s hands on his chest,
the smoke-pressure of Sam’s breath against his neck, the weight of Sam
straddling his lap. Sam’s laughing, nose tucked in at the junction of Dean’s
neck and shoulder, and Dean doesn’t feel anything except bruised.
There’s a knock on the door, and Sam lifts up slowly, blinks at the door, and
the look on his face, thinly-veiled patience overlying anger, closely held,
brings Dean down from the euphoria of his orgasm faster than anything else.
“What,” Sam says, loud enough for the sound to carry echoes of threats, dark
and dangerous, and Dean’s supernatural radar, honed after a lifetime of
hunting, is going crazy. If this is what Frankie meant by Sam being tetchy,
Dean would hate to see his brother honestly pissed off, because the drugs, the
whoring, that’s nothing compared to the way Sam looks and sounds now.
“Sam,” he says, quietly, but Sam’s hand on his chest curls, and his nails dig
into Dean’s skin. Dean gets the hint, quiets.
There’s a pause from the person outside the door, maybe a shuffle of feet, and
when Frankie speaks, Dean’s honestly surprised, because it sounds like he’s
hesitant, like he’s wary.
“Sam? I know you have company, but you’re expected at O’Dell’s house in an hour
and a half, and they’ve said traffic’s backed up. I. I thought you might like
to know. Is there anything you need me to do?”
Sam tilts his head, lets his eyelids droop half-closed, and he pushes off of
Dean, walks to the closet, opens the door and studies what’s inside. “Dean’ll
drive me,” he calls out.
Dean’s head snaps to Sam at the same time Frankie says, “Are you sure? I can
call a cab, or Liam would come to get you.”
“I’m sure,” Sam says, and looks at Dean over his shoulder, says, “Isn’t that
right, Dean?”
--
Dean watches as Sam changes, shucking his clothes and leaving them in a tidy
pile on the futon, completely self-confident in his nudity, like he feels safe,
almost relieved at being naked, unfettered by clothes. That impression only
sinks further into Dean’s awareness as Sam dresses, sliding into tight and
supple black leather trousers, a dark red long-sleeved shirt that hugs his
skin, and adds makeup, just a hint of eyeliner, something to make his cheeks
red.
When Sam turns back to Dean, lifts an eyebrow and asks, “Well?” it’s like
Dean’s looking at that reflection of Sam again. Sam doesn’t look like Sam,
decked out like this, and yet. And yet, it’s the most beautiful thing Dean’s
ever seen, more dark and tempting than he could ever imagine his brother
looking.
Dean’s skin rushes with goosebumps as chills chase themselves up and down his
spine, and he stands self-consciously, licks his lips and adjusts his trousers,
grimacing at the wet spot. That makes Sam smirk, and he runs a tongue along his
teeth, looking for all the world like a cat studying its prey before throwing
another pair of jeans at Dean.
“Later,” Sam murmurs, running a hand down his chest, stomach, one hip, as if
showing what’s on offer. “If you behave yourself, you can fuck me when we get
back.” He turns serious then, says, “If you want to go in the house, fine, but
you can’t interfere with anything that’s going to happen.”
Not, ‘you won’t,’ but ‘you can’t,’ and though Sam’s always been the scholar,
the logical one, Dean thinks there’s something telling in that.
Regardless, he nods, says, “All right,” changes quickly, and leads Sam down to
the Impala.
There’s something almost pathetic about the way Frankie looks at Sam, but when
the manager turns to Dean, his look of casual disdain has returned tenfold.
Dean shrugs it off, takes Sam outside, and has to stop himself from opening the
door for Sam, as if this is a date. It’s not, it’s a business arrangement, but
Sam looks so sinful leaning against the car door, looks like he and the Impala
were moulded out of the same leather when he’s inside. For the first time, Dean
doesn’t feel like his car is his, feels like the car that matches someone else
better, feels like a damned chauffeur—and that’s exactly what he is.
--
“When did you and this O’Dell guy start,” Dean begins to ask, eyes focused on
the road, on following Sam’s directions, knuckles white on the steering wheel.
He feels more than sees Sam look at him, study him, before Sam says, “Connor
needed a waiter for one of his parties. He had his secretary call Frankie up
and Frankie sent me over. Connor liked me, and when I started fucking the
clients instead of serving them drinks, he put in a standing order for me.”
Dean doesn’t say anything to that, just follows Sam’s directions, and they end
up in front of a row of townhouses on a hill, in what looks like a respectable
neighbourhood. Dean parks the car, looks at the house they’re in front of, and
asks, “Are you sure this is the right place?”
Sam smiles, this enigmatic little quirk of lips, as he gets out of the car, and
when Dean’s out as well, following him up the walk, Sam says, “Where’s the best
place to hide?”
Remembering the same lesson Sam’s referencing, one of the first their father
taught them, Dean murmurs, “In plain sight,” and gives the house a narrow look,
studying the shutters, the blinds and thick curtains, the pot of flowers on the
small porch step.
Sam pushes the doorbell, and Dean can hear it echo inside the house, as if it’s
in a much larger room than what the outside dimensions of the townhouse might
suggest. Dean gives the row another look, frowns as he realises, “Sam? None of
the other doors, they don’t look used.”
“Connor owns the entire block,” Sam says. “Outside, they’re still all separate,
and people do come in and out sometimes, but you can get from one end to the
other inside.”
Dean opens his mouth, about to ask why anyone would need that much room, or how
wealthy this O’Dell character is, but the door swings open, and a man, young
thirties maybe, raises a polished eyebrow.
“Oh, cut the shit, Liam,” Sam says, cracking the first honest grin Dean’s seen
on his brother’s lips, and the man smiles back. “This is Dean. He’s off-limits.
Security; you know what Frankie’s been like lately.”
The man, Liam, drops the smile, and Dean sees an edge of worry in Liam’s eyes
as he says, “With good reason, pet.” Liam’s eyes flick to Dean, take in Dean’s
face and body quickly, cataloguing for memory, and asks, “Security? Frankie’s
hiring them a bit prettier these days.” He nods, adds, “M’name’s Liam, and I’m
Connor’s secretary,” and when Dean shakes Liam’s hand, he’s pleasantly
surprised to find that Liam’s got a good, strong grip.
Sam grins, says, “Dean’s mine, not Frankie’s,” and something in Dean’s body
flares at the casual possession, dances higher and hotter when Liam gives Dean
an interested look.
“Must be special, Dean,” Liam says. “Sam’s not the kind to keep anyone else.
Hm. At any rate, Connor’s waiting. Come in, and I’ll get you ready.”
--
Sam was right about the house—they pass a doorway and when Dean looks through,
his gaze travels down an art gallery half as long as the block. He raises an
eyebrow, spotting the type of paintings usually collected in planners and
calendars hanging casually on the wall.
“Connor likes to collect pretty things, no matter the cost or how dangerous the
acquisition,” Liam says. Sam’s further down the hallway, doesn’t give any sign
he’s listening, walking what looks a familiar path, and Dean thinks that’s the
reason Liam drops his voice and adds, sounded at once worried and admiring,
“Sam’s walking a fine line with Connor, but he’s doing it well. Connor’s
cultivated a special interest in Sam but one of these days, he’ll find that, no
matter how much he pays, Sam’s not exactly tame.”
Dean slides that little nugget of information in with the others he’s gleaned
about this new Sam, and finds he doesn’t care for the greater picture that’s
being painted inch by inch. Still, when Sam stops in front of a door and looks
back down at the hallway for Liam, he also looks at Dean. There’s something in
Sam’s eyes, some message, something that Dean doesn’t understand.
Sam rolls his eyes and follows Liam in to the room once Liam unlocks it, and
Dean doesn’t hesitate before he goes inside as well.
It’s dark, his eyes take a few seconds to adjust, and if he thought he’d seen
it all before, he’s obviously wrong. Sam and Liam don’t pause, though, to study
the things, toys, lining the walls, the chains and whips on one side, the
costumes on the other side, the vials and jars of what looks like makeup,
paint, oils, covering a long table that stretches down the middle of the small
octagonal room.
Sam’s leather trousers stay on, as does the shirt, but Liam rolls the sleeves
up a little, revealing Sam’s wrists. He looks the shirt over, picks out a skein
of ribbon halfway in colour between the black trousers and the red shirt, and
cuts off two long pieces and one even longer. The two long ones get tied, one
each on each of Sam’s wrists, tight enough to stop Sam from bending his wrists
but loose enough so that the blood still flows. The knot is elegant, and the
spare pieces hang down from Sam’s wrists, at his sides, fluttering in a breeze
that Dean can’t feel.
He can guess where the third goes, and isn’t at all surprised to see Liam tie
it around Sam’s neck, a knot and a bow in the front, under Sam’s chin.
“Too tight?” Liam asks, and Sam shakes his head, so he finishes it off, hands
lingering on Sam’s skin, and lets the extra ribbon drape and curl over Sam’s
chest.
A few minutes later, with some gel on his hair to loosen the curls and oil on
his skin to make him glow, Liam declares Sam ready, and picks out two whips, of
a longer, thinner leather that matches Sam’s trousers. Sam rolls his eyes, but
looks back at Dean and says, “You can’t interfere,” like he’s reminding Dean
and giving him a chance to back out now, both at the same time.
Dean nods, throat too dry to produce words, so Sam nods at Liam, takes a deep
breath, and when the door on the other side of the room is open, Sam starts
walking, hips sashaying from side to side, ribbons fluttering in the breeze,
head tilted coquettishly. Watching it from behind, Dean’s mesmerised all over
again, and he thinks that Liam, standing next to him and leaning against the
door, is as well.
He slowly tears his eyes away from Sam long enough to look around the room.
Longer than it is wide, panelled in dark wood, a matching wood floor that glows
with mirrors of candle-flames from candelabras and stands dotted around the
room. Carvings dot the juncture of ceiling and wall, and they look a little
like gargoyles but not quite.
“Eyes Wide Shut?” Dean murmurs, seeing one man, wearing jeans and a black
button-down, in the middle of the room. “Needs more people, though.”
Liam snorts, then nods in their direction and says, “Kubrick could never have
filmed this. You’re either in for a treat or a wholly torturous evening, pet.”
Sam walks towards the circle, in that achingly slow pace, twirling the handles
of the whips in his hands, letting the tips drag behind him and get tangled up
in the ribbons around his wrists. He steps lightly in front of the man, and
says, “Connor, Connor, Connor. You wanted the pleasure of wielding the whips
again? So soon? What’s the occasion?”
The man, Connor, Dean guesses, steps forward, until he’s facing Sam, and Sam
leans forward and kisses him. Even from this distance, Dean can see tongue, and
his skin crawls in revulsion as Sam hands over the whips and gives the man
facing him a little mocking nod.
It starts slow, first just a gentle flick of one whip, just enough to move it
so that the end dances around Sam’s ankles, legs. Connor circles around Sam,
who stands there, facing away from Dean, hands held out to the sides, those
ribbons bouncing in wind-trails.
The first time one of the whips cracks through the air and curls around Sam,
flays open the shirt, Dean stops breathing. The second time, his vision goes
blurry, and the third time, he leans against the doorframe, mouth dry, blood
pulsing through his veins.
He doesn’t pass out, doesn’t know how or why, but he must be breathing because
his chest hurts, must still be standing because he can see at almost eye-level
the way those whips, expertly handled, are tearing off Sam’s shirt stretch of
cloth by stretch of cloth. Tantalising, the way Sam’s shirt is floating to the
ground around him, the way those whips are leaving long stripes of red across
Sam’s back, drawing blood in a few places where the lines have crossed.
Sam stands there with his head tilted back, and the ribbons fluttering at his
sides look like dancing streams of blood.
--
John frowns, and Dean doesn’t understand why. Sam’s stitches came out without
any trouble and the skin underneath is whiter than the surrounding areas,
courtesy of the bandage, but it’ll heal clean, doesn’t even look like it’ll
scar. He says as much, and watches as his father’s lips narrow, press together.
Sam looks up at John, eyes too old and knowing, and then stands, brushes Dean
off and says something about a shower now that he doesn’t need to worry about
keeping the bandage dry.
Dean watches him go, eyes drawn to the swing of Sam’s hips and the play of
muscles in his back as he pads, cat-like and silent, out of sight. When Sam’s
turned the corner, after Dean hears the shower turn on, he asks, “Why the look,
Dad?” because they all know that the fewer identifying marks they have, the
better. The tattoos are bad enough, but scars seem worse, somehow, less a
choice and more the reminder of bad decisions, split-second failures.
“Because that was a hydra-bite,” John says, “and your brother nearly bled out
before we got it cleaned and sewn up.” He stops, shakes his head, and goes to
the counter, starts running a pot of coffee. “He should have a scar. Both of us
would.”
There’s something about that, the words or tone, that makes Dean want to ask
questions, but then John gets a phone call, ends up leaving. Dean goes to check
on Sam in the shower, fucks his brother under a hot spray of water, and the
coffee burns.
--
The whips stir and slow, eventually stop and drift to Connor’s sides. Dean sees
them drop, looks at his brother and flinches, stepping back when he sees Sam’s
skin torn to shreds, just like the shirt, some of the cloth in pieces on the
floor, some still on Sam, clinging to the blood.
Connor speaks and his voice echoes in the silent room, says, “Remove the rest
of the shirt.” Dean watches as Sam does as instructed, calmly pulling cloth
away from the already-clotting wounds. He’s perversely glad that Sam came out
here high as a kite, because heroin’s a good painkiller and Sam has to be in a
ridiculous amount of agony.
The shirt joins the rest of its missing pieces on the floor, and when Sam’s
done, half-naked, standing there in his leather trousers and those dangling
ribbons, Connor says, “A surprise tonight.”
Even from twenty feet away, Dean can see the change in his brother’s stance,
can see Sam loosen instead of stiffen, preparing to fight. Dean steps forward,
just one step, but heat floods his veins and his knees buckle, a flood of
desire more powerful than he’s ever felt before rushing over, through, inside
of him.
Liam grabs his elbow, keeps him upright, and steadies him, murmurs, “He’ll be
fine, pet, just you see,” and Dean feels absurdly relieved by the confidence in
Liam’s voice.
Connor tosses the whips aside and steps back, unbuttoning his shirt with
careful, steady movements, and then tosses it aside, letting it sweep across
the floor. Sam laughs, a sound that bounces and echoes around the room, sends
chills across Dean’s nerves, plucking dissonant notes and making his teeth
ache. Its reminiscent of the time he called Sam to tell him the demon was dead
and gone, like there’s something alive in that noise, magic or power, dark and
dangerous whatever it is.
“A surprise,” Sam says, and Dean feels another rush of lust as he watches Sam
move, circle Connor like he’s testing prey. “I don’t like surprises, Connor,”
and though Dean thinks that Sam murmured that, he heard the words loud and
clear. “You should know that by now.”
Connor smiles, says, “And you should know that I don’t care, Sam,” before he
starts chanting in a language Dean doesn’t immediately recognise, takes a small
knife out of one pocket and draws it down the centre of his chest.
The ribbons hanging from Sam’s wrists and throat flutter madly in a sudden
cyclone that doesn’t touch anything else, and then Dean sees a figure start to
coalesce in front of Sam, sees hands form out of smoke and then solidify,
holding the ends of those ribbons.
It’s a woman, Dean thinks, a woman preternaturally beautiful. Candlelight licks
the edges of her skin, casts a sheen over hair so light it looks white, makes
her skin glow ivory. The difference between her and Sam is so obvious, like
looking at opposites, her the picture of thick summer sunlight falling over hay
fields, him the image of night and the presence of secrets told behind locked
doors. Dean’s eyes flick between the two, as they simply stand there and stare
at each other, and then the woman tugs the ribbons and Sam drops to his knees,
looks up at her.
“Samuel,” she murmurs, and her voice sounds low and musical, chimes and bells
bouncing around the room. It makes Dean’s ears ring, makes something low in his
belly tighten. She reaches down, cups Sam’s cheek with one hand, and smiles at
him.
“Síla-na-Gig,” Liam says under his breath, following it up with another phrase
Dean doesn’t recognise, but he understands the tone and agrees with whatever
curse Liam just uttered.
“What’s that mean?” he asks. “What you said first, the gig thing. What’s that?”
Liam swallows, nods his head toward the woman and Sam, still and frozen like
some kind of otherworldly tableau, and says, “She is. Irish goddess of lust who
has a bit of a problem with anyone like Sam.”
Dean’s not sure what Liam means by that, ‘like Sam,’ but doesn’t press that
issue, asks, “What’s she doing here and if she has a problem with Sam, why does
it look like she wants to eat him?”
“Because that’s how she kills whores,” Liam whispers, watching as the goddess
stares at Sam, running fingers over his face. “She fucks them. It kills them,
the ecstasy of her presence, and then she cuts them into pieces and eats them,
shares their body and blood with her devotees.” Liam pauses, looks over at
Connor with unreadable eyes, and adds, “She can only be summoned with the
willing blood of a whore. Connor knows that.”
Connor, leaning up against a wall, arms crossed, watching with curious
amusement, playing with lives, with Sam’s life, and looking as if he doesn’t
care what happens.
“How long has he been planning this?” Dean asks, and despite the overwhelming,
clawing need to stalk to the middle of the room and fuck either one of the
figures there, his voice is flat, deadly, because Connor’s been planning to
kill his brother.
It takes Liam a moment to reply, but then he says, voice twisted, shadowed,
“Long enough for him to have severely miscalculated the lengths Sam will go to
in order to protect himself.”
Dean’s hopes that Liam’s right, because Síla’s hand on Sam’s cheek has curved,
and her fingernails are digging half-crescent moons into the skin, blooming
white, then red, as blood wells to the surface.
“How do we get rid of her?” Dean asks, and then she’s tilting Sam’s head back,
leaning down and pressing her lips against his, and Sam’s just letting her,
letting her do whatever she wants. Fire burns Dean’s veins up from the inside,
as if his blood’s turned to flames, and he licks his lips, tasting the faint,
unmistakable tang of Sam’s come.
Síla stands up, straightens her back, and narrows her eyes when she realises
that Sam isn’t saying anything, isn’t responding, is still just kneeling there,
looking up at her. “You have an anchor,” she says, and Dean reads triumph in
Sam’s eyes, hears Liam make a choked noise next to him.
“An anchor?” Dean asks in a whisper.
Liam shakes his head, and doesn’t answer.
Síla looks around, inhales, and then draws her nails down Sam’s chest, making
him arch and part his lips in a breath of pain. When her nails gouge across the
tattoo over Sam’s heart, Dean sways on his feet, feels the echo of nails on his
skin, and lets out one low whimper as he grabs the doorway for support.
Liam looks at him, eyes wide, and then Dean feels inhuman eyes on him and turns
to see Síla staring at him. Sam growls, menace and threat in the noise, and
Síla’s lips turn upwards in a smile.
She looks at Dean, and asks, “You are his anchor? Come here.”
He’s drawn by her voice, the way she’s looking at him, the curve of her hips
and cheeks, and he’s taken three steps by the time Sam’s ripped the ribbons out
of Síla’s grip and stood to his feet, blocked Dean’s view of her.
“You’re mine,” Sam says, voice threaded with promise, and Dean closes his eyes,
sees Sam stretched out underneath him, naked and glowing slick with sweat,
feels Sam’s ass tight around his cock, hears Sam whimpering and pleading,
begging.
He opens his eyes, looks at Sam, at the fingernail scratches disappearing from
his chest, at the whip marks clotted up and turning white as they heal. “What’s
going on?” he asks, and Síla starts laughing.
“He has not told you?” Síla asks, and Dean thinks she’s faking the shock
written on her face as she turns to Sam, now standing at Dean’s side, his arms
crossed and smirking. “You never told him, merely used him?” A short, sharp
bark of laughter, and she says, “It makes me wonder, Samuel. Who, here, is the
whore?”
A wave of heat swarms over Dean, heat that draws it’s own heat out of him,
leaves him short of breath and dizzy and hard, painfully, achingly hard,
wanting nothing more than to reach out to Sam, next to him, and force Sam to
his knees. Liam, behind them, makes a noise deep in his throat that mixes with
the sound of blood pounding through Dean’s ears.
Dean turns to look at Liam, whose eyes are glazed over and fixed on Sam, teeth
biting down on his lower lip and letting out a thin strand of blood. Dean
frowns, turns to Sam, and recoils, seeing the tattoo on Sam’s heart, Ad
Libitum, flaring a violent red.
Judging from the expression on Sam’s face, and if looks could kill, Síla would
be dead and buried already; as it stands, she might not be too far from it now.
She’s a goddess, apparently, but Dean’s never seen his brother look like this
before, full of rage and brimming with danger. He’s never seen his brother look
like this, but he’s seen demons with this same level of emotion, felt creatures
with this same wave of power curling out of Sam.
“I am,” Sam snarls, stealing the air out of Dean’s lungs. “I’m the whore.
Connor summoned you using my blood. I’m the one who bends over for money, I’m
the one touched by demons, I’m the one with the gifts. Dean’s not a whore, he’s
mine.”
“But you left him,” Síla says, and reaches out. Her fingers get within an inch
of Sam’s mouth and he growls; they dart closer, as if to trace his lips, and he
snaps at them, teeth clacking together when she pulls back. “Perhaps, before,
he was yours, but now, Samuel? Now, after you have left him and lied to him,
after you have claimed him without asking?”
She shakes her head in faux disappointment, and looks at Dean. “Who is the
whore, Dean? Your brother sells himself for money, for drugs, but you, Dean.
You will prostitute yourself for your brother whenever he tells you he is
ready, will you not? Spread yourself open and bury yourself in him, do whatever
it takes, do whatever he tells you, just to be able to fuck him? Who is the
whore?”
Dean’s muscles stiffen, lock, under her gaze, feeling the disapproval stab all
too deeply. “I am,” he whispers, and Sam’s hand connects with Dean’s cheek a
moment later, open palm, crack echoing in the room.
Síla smiles and says, “I will let you explain things to him, Samuel. When Dean
knows the truth of what you are and who you have become, then we shall see if
he remains your anchor.”
***** Chapter 4 *****
John exhales deeply, puts one hand on Sam’s knee under the table as Sam bounces
impatiently in his seat. “There’s nothing I can say or do to convince you to
give me the book,” he says, “is there?”
The man across from them, a contact that Dean doesn’t really like, gives John a
look out of hooded eyes, and says, “No. There isn’t.”
“Why not?” Sam asks, and Dean winces, because their father gave them explicit
directions to sit next to him and not say a word. “It won’t do you any good.
You’ve already used all of it you can.”
The contact raises an eyebrow, looks at Sam, and says, “How did you know that?”
Sam’s nine, Sam has a grin that melts the heart of every waitress, checkout
lady, and teacher that sees it, and Sam knows something that Dean doesn’t think
his father does.
Sam shrugs, grins at the contact, and says, “Please? We really need it and you
don’t, and Dad has the bullets all ready and everything.”
Dean looks at his father, sees the way John’s jaw is clenched, notes the way
his father isn’t saying anything, and despite everything about this, it’s not
the first time that Sam’s popped up and said something that he can’t possibly
know.
It’s also not the first time that the person on the other side is giving Sam
that exasperated look, the one that says Sam’s being a pain in the ass but
fuck, what a cute kid, and what the hell?
There’s nothing unnatural about walking out of a diner with his dad, his little
brother, and what they came to this town to get five minutes later, but there’s
something unnatural about how it happens. Unnatural, but not unusual, and if
Sam’s able to persuade ancient books and extra pieces of pie out of people,
it’s good for them all.
--
Connor brings chairs when Síla orders him to, is content to watch the goddess,
Dean, and Sam sit down in a triangle, content to go back to the wall, lean
against it, Liam at his side and watching Sam with dark, undecipherable eyes.
Dean doesn’t care about those two, except to hope they stay out of this. He’s
finally going to get some answers, everything Sam’s been hinting at over the
past week, except he doesn’t know where to begin, what questions to ask first.
Sam leans in the chair, lets his legs fall apart, and Dean forgets what’s going
on, watching the dancing trails of candlelight make Sam’s skin gleam in the
otherwise dark room, the lines of blood drinking down light as much as the oil
and sweat on his skin reflect it.
“You’ve always healed fast,” Dean says, slow and halting, remembering hunts and
training, the way Sam looked all bruised up, the effort it took to scatter his
own marks of ownership all over Sam’s body, biting harder than should have been
necessary, digging deeper than pleasure and far past the boundaries of pain.
“Why? How?”
“Did you ever wonder why the demon killed Mom over my cradle, in my nursery?”
Sam asks, checking his nails, as if it means nothing to him. “Did you ever
wonder why us and not someone else?”
Dean gives his brother a look and says, “Of course I did. Dad and I both did,”
and trails off when Sam shakes his head.
“Dad guessed, Dean. Not at first, but later on. The way I could talk people
into anything. The way they trusted me, listened to me, opened up to me. The
way I heal,” he adds, motioning at his face, the already-disappeared half-moon
gouges.
Dean listens, sits there as he thinks back on all the weird things that seemed
to happen around Sam, the weird things that he, that they, all grew used to,
counted on.
“He was always looking for answers,” Sam says, eyes trained on Dean, muscles
coiled with tension that breathes preparedness, as if he doesn’t need to see
anyone else to know if they’re a threat or not. “He found some, didn’t like
what he found out but didn’t see a way around it. He thought I’d be easy prey
for a demon, some sort of supernatural homing device. But Dad didn’t find all
of the answers. He stopped looking too soon.”
Síla laughs, a low sound that makes Dean light-headed. “Tell him, Samuel.”
Sam glares at the goddess, bares his teeth, snarls, and in the dark room,
shadows playing on the walls, Sam looks like a cat, one of the sleek creatures
that lives in midnight places and kills its prey with a smile on its face,
blood staining face and fur.
“You said you have gifts,” Dean whispers.
“A little empathy, enough to know how to push people to get what I need,” Sam
says, turning his eyes back to Dean. “More attraction, persuasion. The Celts
used to call it charm. People notice me, and they end up doing what I want them
to.”
Dean blinks, says, “Mind control.”
Sam shakes his head, smirks. “If only it was that easy. People are attracted to
me, Dean; it makes being a whore easier. They notice me, I twist it, make them
want me.” Dean doesn’t know what to say, must be giving Sam a look that says
much the same, because Sam goes on. “The demon picked me because of my gifts,
but he changed them, somehow, made them stronger. Mom’s blood sacrifice made
them stronger.”
“When you came home from school,” Dean says slowly, “and asked me to fuck you.
When I said yes. You made me.” He’s empty inside, empty and hollow, and looks
at Sam when he asks, “You wanted to see if you could do it, didn’t you. Wanted
to know if I would, if you had that much power over me. What I felt for you,
what I still feel—it isn’t real, is it.”
Sam looks at Dean, eyes dark and deep, too old and cruel to be completely
human, and says, simply, “I knew you’d protect me if you loved me. Dad was
looking for ways to help me, exorcise me or something, but he wouldn’t be able
to if he knew how much it’d kill you to see me hurt.”
Dean’s world shatters. It sounds like the whipping peals of a goddess’
laughter.
“She called me your anchor,” Dean asks, voice broken like glass. “What does
that mean?”
“I’ve studied runes, older binding magicks, since I’ve been out here,” Sam
says. Dean remembers the first blowjob, in the room above Frankie’s club, Sam’s
fingers tracing out patterns on Dean’s hips, the uncontrollable urge to fuck
Sam ever since, the odd pull towards Sam, to do whatever Sam wants. “I use them
on my clients,” Sam goes on, “to make the experience more pleasurable, to be
able to protect myself if I have to.”
Síla shifts in her chair, draws Dean’s attention. She’s smiling, her cheeks
painted red, and as she turns to look at Dean, her hair falls over one
shoulder, cascading wave of light and music. Dean swallows, mouth dry, and Síla
says, “That is how it began, yes. But there is more, is there not, Samuel?”
Sam glares at her, apparently unmoved by the same display that makes Dean want
to fall to his knees and lick every inch of her body, starting with her toes
and slowly working his way up. “There was too much power scattered on too many
people,” he says. He gestures at the tattoo over his heart and says, “I decided
to bind the runes together and trapped them, bound the power I drew from them,
in the tattoo ink. It settled in my skin, though, a little too deeply, and the
magic fused with my own gifts.”
“It was a mere accident that made Samuel prettier,” Síla says with an amused
smile. “A mere accident and he is one of the most dangerous whores to ever
practice the craft. This accident turned him even more into a creature, more of
a demon than a human. A work of magic and beauty carved in flesh, aren’t you,
Samuel? And that is why your clients come back to you, week after week, ruining
themselves just for a touch from you. That is why Connor continues to hunger
after you though he knows you are merely toying with him until your patience
runs out, why he hoped you would choose him to share your power with. You toyed
with him, and all along, you were waiting for someone else.”
Dean stares at his brother, at this warped reflection of the Sam he once knew.
His head is spinning, he doesn’t know how to begin to comprehend all he’s
hearing, but his mind dredges something up, a look he was given a few days ago.
“The demon,” he says, feeling his way through the words, that memory. “When it
looked at me, it was expecting you, wasn’t it? Is that because of the rune you
drew on me?”
Síla’s eyes narrow as they flick to Sam’s face.
Sam gives her a lazy grin, eyes cold and calculating, says, “You noticed. I'm
so proud of you, big brother. Yes, I drew a rune on you the night you paid for
me. It connected us enough so that the demon felt my power on you.” Sam pauses,
looks at Síla, and the grin turns deadly as he adds, “A rune of anchoring, to
make the anchoring permanent.”
“Which rune?” Síla asks, and suddenly she sounds as angry as Sam did a few
minutes ago.
“Nauthiz,” Sam replies, and Síla shrieks, stands up, stalks away and to Connor,
hair trailing out like white fire behind her.
Liam edges away from Connor, still looking at Sam, and Dean’s far enough away
from both of them to see Sam nod, smile with teeth that glitter in the light of
Síla’s anger, sees Liam’s answering shrug.
Connor straightens up as Síla gets closer, drops to his knees, and inhales
sharply when she slaps him, leaving a bright red imprint of her hand on his
cheek.
“You did not tell me they were bound,” she hisses. “You have wasted my time,
deargamadán, and put me in danger, you, my devotee.” She spits at his feet,
levels her eyes on Sam, and glowers before disappearing in a burst of sparks
and wind.
The room’s silent.
Sam stretches, catlike flex of muscle and limbs, and stands. “I’m going to get
cleaned up,” he announces to no one in general, sounding amused but little
else, and saunters away, back through the doorway he came in, three sets of
eyes watching him. Connor stands up, unsteady, a few wordless minutes later,
and leaves through a different door.
Dean looks at Liam, who finally says, “You don’t know why she left, do you.”
It’s not a question, but Dean shakes his head anyway. Liam sighs, pushes off of
the wall, sits down where Síla had been perched a few minutes before.
“I don’t know a thing about runes,” Dean confesses, and adds, quieter, “or
about my family.”
Liam hums, reaches over and pats Dean on the knee. “Sam’s confusing, aye? All
sex and secrets, but it’s just for show. He’s built up so many layers of masks
that he’s forgotten who he is. There’s something he hasn’t forgotten, though.”
“What?” Dean asks, tired, starting to feel the numb shock wear away into
something like empty agony, the pain of something deep, deep inside him
cracking.
“You,” Liam says.
Dean laughs, a sound that makes Liam shake his head.
“No, Dean. The rune Sam mentioned, the way it’s used in the anchoring,” Liam
says. “It’s the rune that symbolises need, the deep, intense kind that means a
person can’t live without the object of that need.”
Liam holds up his hand when Dean opens his mouth, waits until Dean’s lips are
pressed together before saying, “As an anchor, the way Sam used it, it doesn’t
manipulate anything. It only intensifies what a person already feels. And,
Dean, it goes both ways. That’s why she couldn’t touch you. Sam bound the two
of you together.”
Dean stops breathing, because that’s not right. Sam can’t need him the way he
needs Sam, it’s not possible. This kind of need, the way Dean needs Sam like he
needs air, it’s not humanly possible, and there’s no way Sam could feel it. He
presses a hand against his stomach, suddenly feeling sick, and remembers the
tattoo around his belly button, the matching one on Sam’s skin. Indivisibiliter
ac inseparabiliter.
“Sam’s my friend,” Liam says quietly. “He never talks about you and refuses to
answer questions about you. His father, yes, but not you, and he won’t ever
accept a client who shares your name. You think Sam was just testing his
control when he asked you to fuck him, that first time? Dean, he wasn’t. He
wanted you the way you want him. Whatever it took, even if it meant damning
himself, he wanted you.”
“He left me,” Dean murmurs, looking down at his hands, because Liam’s being too
honest, too open, and Dean can’t face that, can’t look that in the eyes right
now. “He left and he never apologised, wouldn’t do it differently if he was
given the choice.” Dean stops, thinks back to the room, before they left
Frankie’s club and came here.
I left because I couldn’t stay. Watching you kill yourself to protect me. Sam
didn’t—doesn’t—need Dean’s protection, but it’s more than that. Sam was
worried. Sam was trying to protect Dean.
“He did it to save me,” Dean breathes, realisation another shock. He shakes his
head, rubs his eyes and forehead, swallows back a mouthful of bile. It’s too
much, taking all of this in at once: the reason his mother died, John’s
mission, the whole complex and fucked up history he and Sam share.
Sam’s not entirely human. Sam’s been whoring. Sam wants to protect him. Sam’s a
drug addict. Sam tied them together. Sam’s been playing around with dark magic.
Sam wants him. Sam’s been manipulating other people and taking away their free
will. Sam needs him.
--
“It’s not so bad, Sam,” Dean says, looking away from the road for a split-
second, long enough to see Sam’s jaw clench and unclench, Sam’s gaze fixed
firmly on the window. “Come on, this’ll be your last school.”
Sam snorts, looks away, and Dean looks over again, eyes drawn to the play of
curls at the nape of Sam’s neck, still damp from the shower.
Dean pulls out his phone, and when John answers, he says, “I need to get some
coffee, Dad. Sam and I’ll catch up with you, okay?”
John says it’s all right, tells him to watch out for Sam, and when Dean hangs
up, he says, “Dad said to keep an eye on you.” He pauses, pulls the car off the
road, into Minnesota trees, and when Sam’s looking at him, the dictionary
definition of teenage sullenness, Dean adds, “I think I’d rather keep something
else on you. Or in you.”
The Impala’s almost too small to fuck in; the front seat definitely is, they’ve
experimented with angles and positions for the past three years, but within
minutes, Sam’s half-naked, muscles tight as they clench Dean’s cock. Dean’s
jerking Sam off, hard and fast, and Sam’s murmuring things, dirty things that
Dean thinks no one else would believe Sam capable of knowing, much less saying,
and when Dean comes, it’s with a strangled cry that echoes in the car.
It takes Sam longer to come. It always seems to, lately.
--
“Told him, did you?” Sam asks, somewhere behind Dean. Dean’s cock stirs,
probably always will, hearing his brother’s voice, but he doesn’t move, not
until Sam says, “Wish you hadn’t, Liam. He’ll get all sorts of ideas in his
head now.”
Dean gets up, turns, stands there and glares at his brother, leaning against
the doorway, arms crossed on his chest, looking glazed enough so that Dean can
guess his brother just shot up as well as changing.
“Why not, Sam?” he asks, voice bitter and mocking. “Don’t want me to know how
pathetic I am? How stupid I am?”
Sam snorts, says, “Because now you think I love you,” and it sounds so
disdainful, sneering, that Dean reels. “Connor’s been planning something like
this for a while. I had thought he’d just call a Morrigan and be done with it,
but I prepared for everything. The only way Síla-na-Gig leaves a whore alone is
if the whore’s bound and anchored to a human who loves them. You were
convenient, Dean, nothing more.”
Liam pushes himself out of the chair and moves, standing halfway between them.
“Sam,” he breathes, searching Sam’s face as much as Dean wants to, would if he
could muster up the willpower. “Sam, pet, that’s not true. It can’t be.”
Sam laughs, the sound echoing in the room, some aspect of its pitch or timbre
causing the candles to shiver, half of the flames to blow out. In the near-
darkness, his eyes glow, and Dean wonders how he could have ever missed the
fact that his brother isn’t even human anymore.
“Dad knew?” he asks, quiet.
“Dad knew enough,” Sam says. “Figured things would be interested in me, guessed
I might go wrong if I was given enough of a leash. Think he’d be pleased to
know he was right?”
Liam’s standing there, shaking his head as he says, “It was an accident, Sam,
nothing more, you couldn’t’ve planned for it,” and Dean knows. Like every other
revelation, this one catches him off-guard, but no one has to explain it to
him. The noise Liam made, the way he watched Sam, the way his fingers slip-
glided over Sam’s body in the costume room, familiar, reverent.
“You helped him with the runes, with binding them, and you were the first one
to fuck him,” he says, and Liam’s head turns, slowly. “You gave him the heroin,
that first time, to take the pain away from the tattoo sinking in, and then you
fucked him. He drew a rune on you and he’s still using it. You and Connor,
you’re, but you let Sam rune you.”
Dean stares at Liam, who stares back, and they both jump, startled, when Sam
starts a mocking clap.
“Very good, Dean,” he says, head tilted to one side. “You’ve figured it out.
Now, are we done with the heart-to-heart? I’m tired and Frankie’s expecting me
back at work.” He yawns, stretches, and Dean’s eyes are drawn to the thin strip
of skin visible between the bottom hem of the light blue shirt and the low
waist of the stonewashed jeans Sam’s changed into.
“But it’s a nauthiz rune,” Liam argues, though his tone sounds weak, as if he’s
trying to convince himself in the face of Sam’s absolute certainty.
Sam shrugs, as if to say, So?, and adds to the wordless comment, “All nauthiz
means is need, Liam, you know that. Not love, not romance, not anything happy.
Need is hardly a happy thing. It’s messy and painful and something to be moved
past as quickly as possible.”
Like a drowning man reaching for a lifeline, Dean says, “But you haven’t.” When
Sam doesn’t say anything, merely levels that spine-chilling stare at Dean, Dean
goes on, “You haven’t moved past it. You still need me, just as much as I need
you.”
“You never needed me,” Sam spits out. “I made you need me. Everything you feel,
it’s because I wanted you to,” and he turns, stalks away.
It’s a cut that goes deeper than any knife might have.
“He’s lying,” Liam says, after Sam’s gone, the door to the costume room slammed
shut and the echoes dissipated. “He is.”
Dean stands there, stares at nothing in particular, and eventually says,
“Maybe. Whatever.”
He leaves Liam in the room, walks through the house, and when he gets to the
front door, he walks through it, closes it behind him, gets into the Impala,
and drives out of San Francisco.
--
Dean drives north until he hits Oregon and a small town just above Klamath
Falls. After getting a motel room, he sleeps for sixteen hours straight, lost
in dreams of Sam. Some of them are better than others, some are downright
terrifying, and he wakes up, unsure how he’s supposed to feel. He’s hard, gives
his dick an angry look for reminding him of Sam now that he’s awake, like the
dreams weren’t bad enough, and takes a cold shower. He goes to a diner for
breakfast and drinks a pot of coffee, pushes eggs and pancakes around on his
plate, and ends up leaving without having eaten a bit. Dean gets back in the
Impala, drives across four state lines, and ends up in Blue Earth.
He knocks on Jim's door and when the priest gives him a fish-eyed look, says,
"I need to learn everything I can about runes. Who do I go to for that?"
"Josiah Aiken, but Dean," Jim says, trails off as Dean turns around and goes
back to the car.
--
Josiah Aiken is a man around John's age, maybe a little older. It's hard to
tell, he has runes tattooed all over his body, some of them look Norse, most of
them don't. He opens the front door of a run-down two story in a run-down
neighbourhood before Dean knocks, before Dean's even out of his car, and waves
for Dean to come in before disappearing back inside.
The house is dark, not in an eerie sense, but generally dim, and Josiah comes
out of a kitchen with a cup of coffee in each hand, says, "Photophobic." At
Dean's raised eyebrow, Josiah hands one cup of coffee over and grins. "Not
afraid of light, just light-sensitive. Too many hours of computer screens and
those shitty fluorescents at libraries. Come on in."
Josiah leads Dean into a living room overflowing with books, moves a few piles
off of a couch and an armchair onto the floor and lets Dean have his pick. Dean
sits in the chair, shifting slightly to sink in to the worn cushion, and sips
his coffee, looking around, while Josiah stands in the doorway, hands cradling
his own mug.
Most of the books are old, hardbound, with stitched-in titles, and the great
majority of the titles aren't in English. There aren’t more than a handful of
Latin books, but there are a few Greek texts, closely stacked next to an army
of Greek dictionaries and encyclopaedias.
"I hate Greek," Josiah admits, must have followed Dean's gaze. "Makes no sense
to me, all those damned compounds. Latin, too, but old Norse, now there's a
gorgeous thing." Dean smiles and nods, but the nod’s impatient and the smile’s
thin, so Josiah sighs and shifts, says, “Jim called. Said you flew out of Blue
Earth like a man possessed.” He pauses, glances Dean over, and adds, “Or maybe
like a man trying to run from something.”
Dean takes another gulp of coffee, dark and bitter, and shrugs, looking at the
books instead of the man. “I need to learn everything I can about runes. Jim
said you were the go-to guy for that. I’m Dean. Dean Winchester.”
“I know,” Josiah says, and before Dean can ask, says, “Jim told me, but you
showed up here exactly like your daddy did a couple years back. Which
alphabet?” Josiah asks, changing the subject as he steps toward the
bookshelves, eagle eyes flicking from the books to Dean and then back in one
quick second.
“Norse, I guess,” Dean says, leaning forward, ignoring for now the mention of
his father. “I’m not really sure.” As Josiah’s reaching out for one of the
books, covered in dust and paperback, not hardbound, he adds, “Someone said
something about nauthiz,” and watches as Josiah stills, turns back to look at
Dean, eyes narrowed.
“Nauthiz,” he echoes, flat and disbelieving, and when Dean nods, just once,
Josiah sighs, pulls out the book. “Who’s playing around with the Elder Futhark
these days?” he asks.
Dean shrugs, sips his coffee before replying, “Some guy I know,” and his
stomach clenches, because it’s true, Sam is a guy Dean knows, but Sam’s more
than that, always has been, no matter what Sam says about making Dean need him,
want him.
Sam has been the centre of Dean’s world, ever since his parents brought Sam
home from the hospital and let him hold Sam the first time, ever since John put
Sam in his arms and told him to run, all the times John told him to keep Sam
safe, all the times Sam looked to him, and not to their father. Before the sex,
before Sam came home and charmed his way under Dean, around Dean, he was
already entrenched inside of Dean, in too deep to do anything but leave Dean
aching with Sam’s absence.
“Right,” Josiah says, and drops the book in Dean’s lap. Dean looks down, reads
the cover, and picks up the book, holding it in one hand, the pages easily two
inches thick between the covers. “An introduction,” the old man goes on.
“Before you delve into one rune, you need to have a basic understanding of all
of them. Once you get through that, you can tell me just where you heard of the
nauthiz rune and how you want to study it.”
“It’s an anchor rune?” Dean half-asks. “Used as part of some kind of binding.”
Josiah’s face pales. He nods, says, “Once you’re through that. Grab your pack,
Dean; this’ll take a while. If you can clear the books off of the bed upstairs,
it’s yours for as long as you need it.”
--
It takes a week before Dean finishes the book; Sam’s always been better at
research, Dean’s more the ‘shoot first, ask questions later’ kind of guy, but
he’s struggled his way through pages and pages of description about each and
every one of the Elder Futhark runes, thinks he has information leaking out of
his ears, has dreams where Sam’s covered in runes like Josiah, twists and turns
and angles, wakes up every morning with come-covered clothes and an erection
that won’t go away until he’s pumping it in the shower, Sam’s name a blur on
his tongue and in his mind as he comes.
He wants to go back to Sam, feels everything inside of him pushing him back
towards San Francisco, but instead of getting in the Impala and driving, he
finishes his shower, dresses, and gets back to the book.
--
He thumps the book down in front of Josiah the morning after three hazy hours
of sleep, and says, “’M done. What’s next?”
Josiah looks up from a plate of charred bacon and runny eggs, gestures his fork
at the seat across the rickety kitchen table, and says, “Tell me a story while
I eat. Helps the digestion.” Dean stares blankly, circles and bags under his
eyes, and Josiah huffs, stabs a piece of egg that squelches, and says, “Tell me
about nauthiz. Where you heard it, what it’s in, everything.”
--
Sam glares from beneath his bangs, and when Dean offers him a hand, he smacks
it away and pushes himself up from the ground.
“Dude, youknowyou gotta watch for,” Dean says, before Sam cuts him off.
“Yeah, I got it, thanks.”
John sighs, tells Dean to start his run, that he’ll work with Sam for a while.
Dean leaves, but not without giving Sam a look that very clearly means not to
fuck with their father. John’s been on edge lately, like killing the succubus
here wasn’t good enough, wasn’t their mission, but all he does outside of that
is sit in the university library and read, have meetings with the history and
religious studies professors, write letters to people in Europe, people
connected with the church in Rome.
Dean’s tried figuring out what’s going on, but he honestly can’t, and Sam’s too
silent these days to talk to, too withdrawn and hostile to do anything with but
fuck or fight, and it seems like he’s always going down, on Dean’s cock and on
the ground, shoving off their help, their concern,them.
When Dean gets back, Sam’s nowhere to be seen, and John’s sitting on the front
step, holding his side, maybe a rib.
“You’re too afraid to hurt him, Dean,” John says without preamble. “And he
doesn’t want to hurt you at all. The things we go after, they won’t love you.”
Dean swallows, sits down next to his father, and says, “I know.”
If this is love, it sucks. It hurts.
--
It’s not a long story to tell, in the end. It takes Dean all of Josiah’s
breakfast and two cups of coffee to share, though Josiah eats fast, messy, and
he gulps down coffee like the liquid’s water, not some near-toxic sludge.
Josiah looks fascinated, and when Dean’s done, Josiah leans back in his chair,
belches once, and says, “I’ve never actually heard of anyone who had the
capacity to withstand casting that rune in that combination.”
Dean thinks about that for a moment, asks, “What do you mean?” very slowly and
carefully.
“Well, as the keystone rune in an anchor bond,” Josiah says, then trails off,
shakes his head. “It’s just strong, that’s all, arguably one of the strongest
in the alphabet. The need that nauthiz represents is often this very heavy
weight that increases over time, you read that in the book.”
He waits for Dean to nod, and when Dean has, not at all liking the way this
sounds, Josiah continues. “It also represents a certain amount of bondage, so
using it in as a binding rune makes sense, but exponentially increases the
connection between the people being bound together. Of course, it blocks others
from connecting with those people, which is why it kept out the goddess you
mentioned.”
This is all fascinating, it really is, but Dean’s been waiting a study-filled
week for some answers, and he’s determined to get some.
“What does it mean?” he asks. “How does it affect those two people? Who can use
it? How is it used?”
Josiah cuts him off with a laugh, scratches his stomach, and says, “We’ll get
there, Dean. Promise.”
***** Chapter 5 *****
It’s another two weeks before Dean’s sitting cross-legged on his bed, polishing
his guns to keep his hands busy while his mind whirls in circles. He knows
about nauthiz now, knows about the anchor-rune Sam drew on him, knows more
about what Sam is, to be capable of doing such a thing.
Sam needs him, and has bound himself to Dean forever. Nauthiz is permanent, it
can’t ever come off, can’t ever be revoked. Sam used some of himself in drawing
the rune, gave up some of his own life, gave up the right to his life. If
Dean’s ever hurt, all he has to do is draw healing from Sam and he’ll be fine.
Sam might not be, but Dean can use his brother’s gifts if he can just tap into
the rune.
He’s not sure he wants to; the thought of being capable of all that Sam is, the
thought of being what Sam is, terrifies him.
Even the thought of Sam is terrifying at times, the way his brother looked
talking to the goddess, the way Sam stood there and let Connor whip his back to
shreds, the way Sam’s so blithe and loose about the drugs, about the whoring.
Sam needs him, though, and whatever Sam might think or pretend to think, Dean
needs him just as much. The compulsion to go back to Sam has increased every
day and Dean’s not sure how much longer he’s capable of fighting it.
The binding wouldn’t have taken if Dean’s need wasn’t equal to Sam’s. Nauthiz
doesn’t work, otherwise, just like it doesn’t work on those who’ve been
manipulated into believing something untrue, which means that Sam knows that
Dean truly needs him just as much as Sam needs Dean. Sam’s been playing a game
this whole time, one Dean doesn’t understand.
Dean picks up his phone, presses the speed-dial for the bar, and when Frankie
answers, he says, “Let me talk to Sam,” nothing but cold expectation in his
tone.
“Sam’s not here,” Frankie replies, and when Dean tells him to put him through
to Sam’s phone, Frankie hesitates, eventually says, “He’s at O’Dell’s and he,
he won’t be able to answer his phone. Would you rather talk to Liam?”
Dean’s blood runs cold with fury, and he manages to bite out, “Yeah. Yeah, let
me talk to Liam.”
The phone hums as it transfers, then rings once, twice, three times.
“Hello?”
“Let me talk to my brother.” Dean manages to speak with a flat, even tone, but
it’s hard, all of this anger and sorrow inside, fury and sadness mingling to
freeze his veins and choke him. There’s a pause on the other end, much as there
was with Frankie, and something about the pause, about the hesitation, makes
Dean say, “Now, Liam.”
The ice in Dean’s blood, veins, melts in a swell of fire, hot and scorching,
flashing through him and leaving him trembling, panting, as Sam drawls,
“Goodbye, Dean,” and hangs up.
Dean stands up, wobbles his way towards the door, muscles aching, and collapses
halfway there as his body gets submerged in a heat and pleasure so intense that
Dean’s sobbing when he comes, shaking as he kneels on the floor above Josiah’s
library. He crawls to the wall, pulls himself up, and as soon as he’s vertical,
the fire comes again, knocks him back down, and wrings another orgasm out of
him.
He can’t breathe, can’t think, but knows he needs to do something, so he claws
his way upwards, and the heat attacks him before he’s even got one foot under
him. He comes with a pained shriek, lies on the floor and tries to find air,
but then the fire starts burning him and it won’t stop, doesn’t stop, until he
blacks out.
--
Dean dreams, and in his dream, he sees Sam, and inside of Sam, he sees a
scorpion sitting on a block of ice, and inside of the ice, he sees a heart, and
inside of the heart, he sees fire, and inside of the fire, he sees himself.
When the fire spreads to the heart, when the heart melts the ice, the scorpion
will kill him.
Dean dreams, and in his dreams, he understands that Sam is not the scorpion,
but pretends to be one, protects himself as he pretends, and he understands
that he is not fire, but earth, pounding and pulsing, and ice is all that
separates him from his brother, an ice of Sam’s making, an ice close to being
destroyed by Dean with the same fire that might scorch the scorpion to death
before the scorpion can kill him.
Dean dreams, and then he wakes up reaching for a gun.
“Easy, Dean,” Josiah says, and leans over Dean, checks Dean’s pupils. “I moved
the knife from under your pillow; didn’t want you killing me when you woke up.
How’re you feeling?”
Dean inhales, exhales, and runs through a mental catalogue of his bones and
muscles. “Sore,” he says, “and tired. How long was I out?”
“A few hours,” Josiah says as he sits back. He pins Dean with a stare, and
says, “Though you’re lucky. Whoever’s on the other end of that rune must be
strong.” Dean winces, looks away, and Josiah hums, says, “You should’ve told
me. I wouldn’t’ve made you wait.”
“Why not?” Dean asks, pushing himself up, and even that minor effort hurts,
makes his muscles scream in protest, leaves him weak, slightly out of breath.
“Because the things you need,” Josiah answers, slowly, carefully, making sure
Dean’s following him, “aren’t things you can live without.”
Dean’s heart stops.
Josiah nods, “Food. Water. Air. And whoever’s on the other end of this can’t be
surviving very well without you there. Hell, I can’t believe you’re doing this
good. You should’ve been drawn back to the caster days ago.”
“I’ve been fighting it,” Dean whispers. “What happened, was that.”
“The other person, drawing something out of you,” Josiah says, answering Dean.
“Sexual energy, if the way I found you’s anything to go by, but that could be
transmuted into anything.” He stops, takes a deep breath, and says, “I don’t
like telling people what to do, Dean, but if you don’t go back, one or both of
you won’t be around much longer. And,” he says, carefully, “I think you want to
go back. Don’t you.”
Dean leaves the next morning.
--
He’s got the bar on speed-dial, calls every half hour. Every time, Frankie
tells him that Sam’s sleeping, that Sam’s busy, that Sam “doesn’t want to
fucking talk to you, you shithead, so stop fucking calling him.” In between
calling the bar, Dean calls O’Dell’s house, having gone through a circle of
contacts to get the unlisted number. Liam’s the only one who answers at first,
and Dean doesn’t spare more than a passing thought of who got to Connor before
he did, but as Dean crosses into Nebraska, Liam stops answering and just lets
the phone ring and ring.
Dean keeps calling.
--
It’s one in the morning when Dean pulls up in front of the bar. He leaves the
Impala in the alley and barges inside, puzzled when he registers that the
atmosphere’s tense, as if every person’s surreptitiously looking over their
shoulders, keeping close to their friends and eyeing strangers with suspicion.
They all look at Dean when the door closes, as if they can hear the quiet snick
over the thumping music, and Dean raises an eyebrow in response, heading for
the bar a moment later.
Frankie’s standing there, behind the bar, watching Dean approach, and as Dean
gets into audible range, he starts shaking his head. “He’s not here,” Frankie
says, then says it again, “He’s not here, he’s not upstairs.”
“Where’s Sam,” Dean asks, voice low, and he shifts on his feet, lets Frankie
catch a glimpse of the gun Dean’s carrying. Frankie’s eyes widen and he
swallows, and Dean almost laughs at the stereotypical picture of a man afraid.
“With Liam,” Frankie says, stepping back again, as if he knows how angry that
answer is going to make Dean, as if he’s scared for his life even with a bar
between them and two hundred people watching.
Dean nods, narrows his eyes and says, “I’m going to go upstairs and take a look
at his room, and then I’ll head over there.” Underneath the words, swimming
inside of his tone and his expression, he’s saying, Don’t fuck with me, and if
anything’s wrong with him, I’ll kill you all.
Frankie nods, and Dean takes off, practically sprinting up the steps. This
close to Sam, being in the same city, is making the binding almost impossible
to resist, this compulsion to find Sam, to be with Sam, thrumming through his
veins and fighting to take control of his muscles.
Dean kicks the door down, presses his hand on the doorframe as he stares around
the room, the pain of splinters digging into his palm keeping him focused,
standing there, trying to understand what he’s seeing. Sam’s room has been
trashed, completely ruined. There are clothes everywhere, symbols painted on
the wall with lotion or oil, something that shimmers rainbow-slick in the
light, something that dripped down the wall and ruined the edges of runes Dean
half-recognises. Book pages are scattered all over the place, ripped and balled
up, pieces sticking to drops on the floor of a substance Dean hopes isn’t
blood.
By far, though, the most fascinating and horrifying change, is in the paintings
Dean had seen before, those abstract splotches of paint on canvas, two colours
bleeding into one another. He understands, now, the fact that those
abstractions are really runes, the powerful ones like thurisaz and kenaz, and
seeing them now, the canvases hanging in tatters, black paint splashed over
them, makes chills run up and down Dean’s spine.
He stands there a moment longer, then runs down the stairs, into the Impala,
and drives across town like if he doesn’t, he might die. He might. He’s not
sure what all of the rules about a binding like this are.
The closer he gets to O’Dell’s house, the more he realises his blood is
singing, burning inside of him. It feels like a threat and a promise both, but
then he’s hard, and he can feel lips on his cheek, moving their way up to suck
on his earlobe. He shivers, and the phone starts ringing. Dean ignores it,
ignores the lips trailing over his body, ignores the pressing need of his
erection, and keeps driving.
--
Dean bangs on the door, closed fist pounding over and over, and when no one
immediately answers, he pounds a rhythm out with both fists, kicking at the
door and yelling for Liam. His phone, left in the car, is still ringing. Dean
aches with the stinging heat of flames, and he’s almost ready to scream before
the door opens under his fists and he nearly falls inside, caught off-guard.
“He doesn’t want to see you,” Liam says, but Dean pushes past him, into the
house. He stops, looks around, because this house is a block long and he has no
idea where Sam is, but then fire flares, and he looks left, unerringly drawn in
that direction. “Dean, he doesn’t,” Liam says, but Dean punches him, leaves him
unconscious in front of the door, and starts running, careening around corners,
sliding on polished floors, yelling his brother’s name.
There’s no answer, but as Dean moves further and deeper into the house, the
singing gets louder, the lips on his skin are pressing hard enough almost to
bruise, and then he’s standing in front of a door.
The rune pulls him forward, and when Dean opens the door, Sam’s on the other
side, staring down at him.
It’s a moment that lasts forever, as Dean takes in the image of his brother,
the way Sam’s paler than milk, thin and wretched-looking, green-tinged bags
under his eyes. Sam’s clothes are falling off of him, and his hair is stringy,
the dye grown out and leaving his roots two shades darker, two shades closer to
normal. His brother’s shaking, trembling, and there’s no trace of the self-
sufficient, cat-like creature left in the wreck of Sam standing right there.
“Sam,” Dean breathes, reaches out to touch his brother.
Sam flinches, panic and madness in his eyes, steps back, and says, “I don’t
want you here, Dean. I don’t want you. Go away, leave me alone.” Dean steps in
to the room, and Sam says, “Please, Dean. Leave.”
Dean shakes his head, touches Sam’s skin, and then his world blurs as the bond
between them zings and clips into place. Dean reels, blinks, and then Sam’s all
over him, dragging him to the bed and undressing him at the same time. It’s all
Dean can do to keep up with his brother, with how fast Sam’s moving, pushing
Dean on to the bed, first sucking on Dean’s neck, then his hip a split-second
later, fingers first dancing across Dean’s nipples, then curling around the
base of Dean’s cock, hard and leaking.
“Sam,” he murmurs, arching his lips as Sam takes him in, swallows him down, and
before Dean can wind his hands in Sam’s hair, fire floods through him and he
comes, strangled cry echoing in the room.
Sam doesn’t stop once Dean’s done coming, just starts licking Dean’s skin,
sucking and biting lightly as he grazes his teeth over arms and legs, stomach
and chest. It’s as if Sam can’t get enough of Dean, and even as Dean watches,
feels another orgasm build up in his toes as Sam ruts against him, Dean sees
Sam heal. His colour returns, the sickly pallor of his skin clears and goes
away, and now Sam doesn’t look as ill, looks well on his way to being sleek and
lithe again.
“Fuck me,” Sam mouths into the hollow of Dean’s neck, words getting tangled up
in skin and ears and the curves of Dean’s heart. “Dean, fuck me, please, want
to feel you inside, want to come around your dick, fuck me.”
It’s hard to lie there, doing nothing more than watching as Sam tears his own
clothes off, fucks himself open on his fingers, but it’s impossible to sit
still when Sam rolls, propping himself up on knees and elbows, still begging,
his litany of words falling past the point of Dean’s comprehension.
Sam keens when Dean enters him slow and easy, tries to rock back, but Dean’s
hands are tight on Sam’s hips, pressing marks of ownership into Sam’s bones.
“Easy,” he murmurs, then smoothes a hand down Sam’s back as Sam shudders,
whimpers. “I’ll get you there, Sam, I promise. Always will. I’m yours, Sam. I’m
yours.”
Dean’s world narrows to the way Sam feels tight around him, to the way Sam’s
breathing under him, the way Sam’s begging, saying things like, ‘whore’ and
‘slut’ and ‘yours.’
“My brother,” Dean whispers, and it should sound filthy, sound wrong, but it
doesn’t. “My Sam,” he murmurs, and he presses an open-mouthed kiss to the
nearest piece of Sam’s skin, tongue swiping across that sweat-slick bitter
tang. “Not a whore, never a whore.”
Sam comes silently, shaking, and when Dean does as well, pulls out and turns
Sam around, he reaches up for Sam’s face, wipes tears off of Sam’s cheeks, tugs
Sam into his arms.
“I did some research,” Dean says gently. “You’re such an overachiever, y’know
that?” and is rewarded by a choked laugh from this still-broken Sam that’s
nothing like his Sam, nothing like the reflection of Sam he’s come to expect.
His brother, the chameleon. “Why didn’t you tell me, you idiot?”
Sam sits there, circled by Dean’s arms, for a few minutes as silence stretches
between them. Finally, he shakes his head, tries to pull away, and Dean holds
him tighter, presses himself closer to Sam.
“No,” he says, nails digging into Sam’s skin. “You’re not going anywhere, Sam.
Not until you answer me.”
“You don’t need me, Dean,” Sam says gently, and when Dean starts to argue, Sam
says, “Not really. You want the Sam you knew. You don’t know me. You don’t know
what I’ve done, what I am. I’m not a good person.”
Dean chuckles, licks a path up the side of Sam’s neck, bites down on the skin
just behind Sam’s ear. “And I am? And you think I care? Dude. Shut up.”
Sam lays there a moment longer, but the second Dean starts carding his fingers
through Sam’s hair, Sam elbows him in the stomach, pulls away and stands up,
all in one smooth motion that emphasises how otherworldy he is; nothing human
could ever be that graceful.
“Sam?” Dean asks, and sits up, scoots to the edge of the bed when Sam starts
digging around for clothes. “The hell’re you doing?”
“Leaving,” Sam snaps. “I thought that’d be easy to guess, even for such a
thick-headed, starry-eyed fool as you've turned out to be. This is life, Dean.
Deal with it.”
Dean stands, gets right in Sam’s face, and says, “Fuck you, Sam. If you leave,
you’ll die,” and falls to the ground, unconscious, world turning hazy black,
after Sam spits some words at him.
--
Dean adjusts the sun visor, testing every angle before he gives up, puts it
back up and smashes his sunglasses a little closer to his face. “Sam and
school, dunno why he loves it so much,” Dean says, tapping his fingers against
the dash, leaning forward to watch the main entrance to the high school. John,
sitting behind the wheel, smiles but doesn’t say anything. Dean sighs, says,
“He didn’t mean it, Dad,” and watches that smile slip from John’s face.
“Yeah, Dean. He did.”
“Dad,” is all Dean says before his father cuts him off.
John shakes his head, says, “Don’t worry about it, Dean. Sam’s going through a
phase. One day he’ll appreciate it.”
Dean gets the distinct impression that his father is talking about more than
just the argument John and Sam’d had that morning, about moving again, changing
schools midway through the year. He’s not sure why, but he thinks his father
and brother have been having a lot more arguments recently that are about
something other than whatever the latest excuse to yell and shout is. More than
feeling kept out of some loop, some information, Dean’s just left with a sick
feeling in the pit of his stomach.
The bell echoes out across the parking lot, and Dean straightens, watching the
doors and the students pouring out of them, searching for Sam. He doesn’t lay
eyes on his brother, not until most of the stragglers have already left, and
Sam’s walking out with another kid in his class, a guy that’s a few inches
shorter than Sam, with hair that doesn’t so much curl as corkscrew out from his
head.
Dean realises the second his father does, the way the two are walking, almost
too close, heads ducked together and laughing, and something inside of Dean
hardens, has him opening the door and yelling out, “Come on, Sammy! We’re
running late.”
Sam’s eyes flick to Dean instantly, and Dean gives the other kid a smile that
borders more on possessive than it does on friendly. Dean’s eyes narrow when he
sees Sam lay a hand on the kid’s shoulder, whisper something into the kid’s
ear, but Sam gets in Dean’s car, sits behind Dean for hours and hours as they
move from Arizona to New Hampshire, and Sam will never see that kid again,
won’t be thinking about him later when Sam’s back is pressed against a gas
station wall somewhere in Texas and he’s panting out Dean’s name in ragged
groans.
--
Dean wakes up and looks around. Liam’s perched on the edge of the bed, holding
a bag of frozen peas to his cheekbone.
“Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to kill the messenger?” he asks, moving the
peas, wincing as he pokes and prods at the massive bruise Dean gave him.
Sam’s clothes are gone, the indefinable aura of Sam is gone, and Dean aches
inside, an ache fed by the bond stretching too tight as Sam puts distance
between them.
“He’s gone,” Dean murmurs.
Liam nods, as if it was a question, and says, “I searched the house, but he’s
not here. Tried scrying for him as well, but the crystal broke. He doesn’t want
to be found.”
Dean stands up, snarls, “Well tough fucking shit,” and takes off.
--
He regrets it later, driving down to San Diego—not leaving, but leaving without
getting some answers from Liam first. He calls, and when Liam answers before
the first ring’s even done, as if he’s been waiting, Dean says, “Tell me what
happened. Why were you and Frankie acting so terrified? What the hell happened
to Sam’s room?” He pauses, then, as if the thought’s just hit him, “What the
fuck happened to your boss?”
There’s a choked laugh on the other end of the phone, and Liam says, “Connor
was my cousin, Dean, not my boss. Calling me his secretary, that’s something we
did ever since we moved to this country. People don’t mind a man and his
secretary fucking, but they tend to look down on cousins sleeping together. And
before you ask, yes, we knew you were Sam’s brother. Security, though,” Liam
adds, more quietly, “that was good. True, I think.”
“He was your cousin?” Dean asks, catching on the past tense the way only a man
deserted can.
Liam laughs again, sounds tired and brimming with desperation, empty and angry,
all at once. “Connor asked Sam to come back, just once. It was like Síla said;
Sam was just humouring Connor. He got sick of playing Connor’s games. I
didn’t,” Liam says, pauses and inhales, says, “With the rune on, I didn’t even
care,” like he’s admitting the cause of his own damnation.
It takes Dean a minute to comprehend what Liam’s just said, and when he does,
he lets out a muffled curse and says, quietly, “I won’t tell you I’m sorry,
because I’m not.”
“I wasn’t expecting any sympathy from you, Dean Winchester,” comes the reply,
and Dean respects Liam a little bit more for that.
They’re quiet, Dean passes five exits on the highway before asking, “You gonna
answer my questions?” one hand gripping the phone, the other clenched around
the steering wheel, knuckles white as fire blooms in his veins.
“After you left,” Liam says, and then stops. Dean waits, waits and drives, face
turned to look at the road, eyes not focused on anything. “After you left and
after Sam killed Connor, he went crazy, went on this rampage and. Said he
didn’t want the runes, the connections, not if it felt like you were always
there, too. He broke them all at the same time, smashed up the power he had
stored in the paintings. Doing it like that, it should have killed him.”
“But it didn’t,” Dean says, mind racing, trying to remember everything he read
at Josiah's, most of it already gone from his mind, everything except the name
of the rune used in the anchoring, nauthiz, need, like it’s replaying in his
mind, over and over again, attached to a name. Need Sam. Need Sam. Need Sam.
“No,” Liam whispers. “But it was terrifying to see.” Liam hesitates, and when
Dean’s about to ask what’s going on, what was so terrifying, Liam says, “Good
luck finding him, Dean, and don’t call me again,” and hangs up.
--
He misses Sam by a day in Phoenix, by a week in Missoula, by hours in Biloxi.
Sam doesn’t stop moving, but as the weeks turn into a month, then close in on
two, the link binding him to Sam weakens, tries pulling arousal out of Dean and
fails, not strong enough to do more than make Dean’s heart flutter every time
he asks someone different if they’ve seen his brother. Sam’s dying, that much
is clear, even to Dean.
The rune sputters on a Tuesday, as Dean’s driving west towards Indianapolis,
and he pulls over on the side of a crappy little state highway in Ohio when his
own heart skips a beat.
“Come on,” he murmurs, and in a fit of desperation, scratches his hip, right
over the spot where Sam drew the anchoring rune. Dean’s nails are jagged, he
draws blood, and the bond between them shivers, the sputtering steadies, and
Dean’s trying not to sob in relief.
“Hold on,” he says, and pulls back on the road, drives a little faster, turns
his music a little louder. “Just hold on, Sammy.”
--
Sam didn’t make it to the city. He’s holed up in a small motel just east of
Indianapolis, and Dean’s relieved to see that no one else is around when he
follows the rune into the parking lot. There’s only one room with a light on,
and when Dean tries the doorknob, it opens.
Sam’s lying on the bed, still in his clothes, either fast asleep or
unconscious, and Dean looks around, doesn’t notice that anything else has been
touched, and thinks that this place, with its lace curtains and too-bright
wallpaper, would be a shitty place to die.
He strips, jacks the heater up a little, and then undresses Sam, worried when
Sam doesn’t wake up, just shifts, moving closer to Dean, turning his face
towards Dean’s. It’s a hollow victory, seeing Sam react like that in his sleep,
and Dean leans down, presses his mouth to Sam’s.
“Wake up,” he says, words ghosting over Sam’s lips like Dean’s tongue had a
moment before. “Please, Sam. Wake up.”
Sam stirs, frowns, and opens his eyes, fixing glazed pupils on Dean. Sam’s eyes
don’t look dead, don’t look manic. They just seem tired, as if Sam’s ready to
give up and let go.
“Go ‘way,” he slurs, and musters up enough energy to pull one hand away from
Dean, let it flop over his stomach, as if saying that the rest of him will
follow soon enough, just give it time.
“That first time,” Dean says, drawing Sam’s attention back. “That first time,
Sam, when you came home and asked me to fuck you. Why did you ask me? And don’t
lie, please.”
“’Cause I wanted you,” Sam mutters, pushing the words out, head lolling
backwards, muscles twitching. “Ev’ry way I could have you. Need you.”
Dean swallows, finds the rune, the way it felt when it pulled him to Sam, the
way it led him here, let him know how Sam was doing, and pushes. Sam arches,
spine bending, and his lips part in pain or pleasure, Dean’s not sure.
Dean keeps pushing until Sam’s eyes focus, until he doesn’t look like he’ll die
at any second, and then asks, “Do you still?”
When Sam glares, Dean says, “You left, Sam. You were right, you’ve changed. But
so have I. I still want—need—you, no tricks, no mind-games; I came after you
when you were too weak to keep them up and you know it. Three years, and I
still wanted you the second I saw you. But do you need me anymore? Or do you
just need the heroin and a cock, no matter whose?”
It hurts to say, but Dean has to, has to know. He’s never been big on talking,
never understands the power of words when he uses them to lie, to trick people
day after day after day, but when Sam looks up at him and says, almost as if
he’s being forced to, almost as if this is a confession made against his will,
“Idiot. You know it’s you. I damned myself for you, you think it was easy?” he
thinks he finally gets it, because those words knock the breath right out of
his lungs.
“Bitch,” he says, mouth on autopilot. Sam winces, it takes Dean a minute to
look past the self-deprecating curve of Sam’s lips, under the light mockery and
forced blankness of Sam’s eyes, and see wariness, hesitation, understand what
that means in response to what he’s just said.
“Nauthiz,” Dean says. “And neither of us are whores because of it. I mean, if
it’s good enough for a goddess.”
Sam searches Dean’s eyes, finally smiles wearily and looks away.
Dean smiles back even though no one sees it, smiles because Sam’s not moving,
not leaving. He might not be looking at Dean, there are a million and one
discussions hanging between them, and they’ll all hurt to have, dig deep and
make old wounds surface, but Sam’s not leaving.
Sam’s not leaving.
--
They lay there, side by side, Dean staring up at the ceiling and Sam tilted
towards the bathroom, for hours. At some point they pull the covers up and
sleep, and Dean wakes up to Sam’s nose buried in his armpit. That has to reek,
has probably killed Sam with the stench, because Dean hasn’t showered in what
feels like years. Still, he doesn’t want to move Sam, doesn’t want this to
change, because Sam’s sleeping against him and there aren’t any lines around
his eyes or his mouth.
Dean falls back asleep, eyes lingering on the curve of Sam’s shoulder, tracing
edges of bones and lines of muscle, breathing in Sam.
The smell follows Dean into his dreams and he wakes up hard, dick tenting the
sheet, aching for release. Sam’s already awake, must be, because he’s moved,
lying on his back and staring at the ceiling. Dean kicks the sheet off, rolls
over, straddles his brother, fingers grazing over Sam’s tattoos, and when Sam
looks at him, frown marring his forehead, Dean grins.
“I’m horny,” he says, “and I think it’s your fault, so we’re going to fuck.”
Sam rolls his eyes, but shifts underneath Dean, says, “There’s lube and condoms
in my jeans pocket. Back right.”
Dean reaches down, gropes through the pocket and sits up, bottle and plastic
packet in hand. Sam looks resigned, underneath him, tired and worn-out, but
when Dean starts stroking Sam, he closes his eyes.
Sam doesn’t move, doesn’t make a noise, and it hits Dean that his brother’s
been whoring for two years now, that sex might mean as little to Sam as it does
to anyone else who gets paid for it. Sure, it’s not like Dean sees sex as this
all-encompassing means to physically express love, it’s usually just for fun,
stress-release, but it’s been a job for Sam, nothing more.
In a way, he’s a little pleased that Sam’s not pretending to enjoy this more
than he actually is, hoping for a better tip, trying to take better care of a
customer, that he’s comfortable enough or just doesn’t care enough to put on a
show for Dean. He doesn’t like that Sam isn’t stopping him, though, wonders if
Sam would ever tell him no.
The packet opens between Dean’s teeth, and Sam’s eyes fly open when he feels
Dean rolling the condom onto his dick, not onto Dean’s as Dean guesses Sam
expected.
“Dean,” Sam says, falling silent when Dean shakes his head. He watches, though,
as Dean lubes him up, as Dean stretches himself, as Dean lifts up and then
sinks down, so slowly that Dean thinks it might kill them both. It’s been
months since he’s been fucked, feels like it, so tight, but this is the first
time it’s ever been Sam’s cock inside, the first time it’s ever been his
brother gazing up at him with blown pupils, the first time it’s ever been Sam’s
hands hesitantly settling on Dean’s hips.
One of Sam’s fingers brushes the edge of the invisible anchor rune, and Dean
groans, gives up the battle and falls, feeling everything in him burn as Sam’s
inside and they’re skin to skin.
“Dean,” Sam says again, looking up with wide eyes. “Dean, you didn’t.” The
tattoo over Sam’s heart, Ad Libitum, is flaring red, burnt crimson against
Sam’s skin, and Dean runs his fingers over it, feels it warm up under his
touch.
“I know,” Dean says, and plants his palms on Sam’s chest, fingers curled so his
nails leave little crescent moons of blood in the middle of that pale, pale
skin. “I wanted. I wanted to.”
--
Dean sits up, tries to remember the dream that woke him up but can’t. The
curtain’s open, fluttering in a late summer breeze, and the moon’s full,
spreading silver over the tops of trees. The house is quiet, for once, not
creaking or popping, sounds like the fridge is in the quiet part of its cycle,
humming just under the range of audible noise, and John’s been gone for two
weeks, hunting something three states away.
Dean looks down at the person next to him, in bed, and smiles.
Sam’s sleeping with his mouth open again, eyelashes curved against his cheeks,
hair tossed this way and that. His lips are swollen, the sheet’s riding low on
his hips, and in the moonlight, with bruises, bite-marks, fingerprints, and the
curving words of a tattoo limned in silver, Sam doesn’t look like he belongs
here, next to Dean, covered in the proof of Dean’s possession.
Dean would never say it out loud, hates thinking it, but Sam looks beautiful.
Samisbeautiful, and he’s the only one who ever gets to see Sam like this, naked
and unguarded. Sam is his, will be forever if Dean has anything to say about
it.
It might be minutes or hours of staring later when Sam stirs, opens his eyes
and gives Dean a bleary-eyed look that makes Dean smile, reach out to run a
hand through his brother’s hair.
“Go back to sleep,” Dean murmurs, and Sam blinks, licks his lips, and closes
his eyes, snuggling into Dean’s side.
--
Sam looks better afterwards, and Dean’s guessing that maybe he’s some sort of
incubus now, makes a promise that if that’s the case, Sam won’t ever be getting
his meals from anyone but Dean.
It’s not a comfortable silence, exactly, though it could be worse. Dean can
almost feel Sam thawing, hear his brother thinking, and wonders what sorts of
things are running through Sam’s head, if they’re the same things running
through his own, wonders if Sam's going to try and leave again.
“Are you,” he asks, before he can stop himself, and Sam turns, looks at Dean,
question in his eyes. “Heroin,” Dean says. “Do you need,” and stops again.
Sam shrugs, turns back around. “Did withdrawal while I was running,” he says,
words hanging in the air between them. “There wasn’t enough time to work for it
and I couldn’t exactly get any in the smaller towns.”
“Bet it sucked.”
Sam doesn’t say anything to that, and Dean traces two fingers over the ‘x’ on
Sam’s arm.
He’s about ready to say something to break up the silence, but then his phone
rings and they both jump. Sam shifts as Dean answers, says, “Hello?” without
checking the caller ID.
Sam turns, looks at Dean, and understands the sudden panic Dean’s showing as
soon as Dean says, “Dad. Hi.”
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