runedgirl | Fade To Black (Not While Your Hand’s In Mine) Ch 3/18

Title: Fade To Black (Not While Your Hand’s In Mine) Ch 3/18
Author: runedgirl
Rating: NC17 soon – this chapter PG13
Pairing: Sam/Dean, Sam/demon!Dean
Summary: The brother that Sam gets back isn’t the same, but Sam’s love is. Sam risks everything and leaves everyone he’s ever cared about behind in the desperate hope that the bond between him and Dean might just be strong enough to transcend what hell did to him.
Set post Season 3, seven months after Dean’s deal came due and written over the summer before it was AU, this story just kept writing itself and wouldn’t let go until it was an epic love story in every sense, eventually spanning five decades with enough twists and turns to make me dizzy.
Warning: Spoilers for S3 finale; some violence; Wincest (obviously)
Beta: Big thanks to K for caring enough to make awesome suggestions *hugs*
AN: Not a WIP – story is finished with 18 chapters and will be posted regularly. Feedback is adored and promptly savored. Posting two chapters this time – let me know what you think?

The clock on the bureau reads 7:28 am when Sam opens his eyes, but he only sees it for an instant before there’s a fist crashing against his cheekbone and a knee digging hard into his stomach. He doubles up with a whoosh, head snapped to the side and breath gone, but old instincts kick in even without sight and he’s got the spray bottle clutched in his left hand and aimed in the right direction as he squeezes the trigger as hard as he can.

“Ohfuck, not fair!,” the demon yells as he stumbles back, and Sam seizes the advantage and sprays him again, this time catching him in the face where Sam’s seen him vulnerable before. The demon screams and presses the heels of his hands to his eyes, going to his knees and trying to cover his face as he crouches low under a third burst of holy water.

“Stop, fuck, jesusfuck, stop,” he gasps, flailing wildly and catching Sam’s wrist with one hand. “Sammy, okay okay, enough.

It shouldn’t work, damn it shouldn’t, and Sam doesn’t want it to, but his name in Dean’s voice and the feel of Dean’s fingers clasping his wrist make Sam pause. The demon scrambles away and sits against the far wall, rubbing at his eyes and muttering curses and not looking at Sam.

“Fuck, that hurts,” he groans, pulling the wet tee shirt over his head – Sam’s clean shirt that he must have helped himself to once he escaped the too-hastily drawn trap and the bathroom – and tossing it across the room. It lands on the desk chair, drips a little puddle onto the rug.

They lock eyes, hazel to black, and stare at each other for a long moment, the demon still breathing heavily and weakened the way Sam now knows he always is after the holy water saps his strength. Sam’s fingers twitch on the trigger and the demon follows the movement. Sam’s nose drips a thin trail of blood down over his upper lip until he licks it away, and the demon follows that too.

“Put your hands out.” It’s an order, and Sam keeps the spray bottle in one hand while he gathers up the discarded electrical wire with the other. “Do it. Now.”

“Bitch,” the demon says, but he puts his wrists together and holds them out. “Don’t do that again.

Sam winds the wires tight, hears the demon hiss when they bite into flesh already rubbed raw. “Then don’t do that again,” he says, and lets the demon’s bound hands fall back into his lap. Damn thing’s taken off his own holy-water damp jeans and put on a pair of Sam’s, which are too long and hang down over his bare feet. Something about that makes him look young and vulnerable, and Sam feels a stab of guilt for the trickle of blood on the underside of the demon’s wrist, the flicker of pain that crosses his handsome face.

He misses Bobby suddenly, so much it makes his breath hitch. Misses the warm reassurance and the steady calm, the way he could fall back on the older man’s experience and knowledge. Sam’s alone now, has cut ties to Bobby and everyone else who’s ever meant a thing to him. Set himself on a one-way path that will probably get him killed, but even now Sam can’t really bring himself to regret it. One glimpse of his brother’s green eyes leaves the rest of the world in the dust when it comes to Sam’s priorities, and the hope that he can have another is enough to inspire him to keep trying.

Sam spends the next ten hours on the laptop, the reassuring feeling of losing himself in research easing his panic into tunnel-visioned determination. He ties the demon to the other desk chair, bare-chested in Sam’s too-big jeans, ignoring his demands for beer and cherry pie and trying not to stare when he finally falls asleep, head lolling onto his chest and bare feet splayed on the floor. By the time the sun goes down, Sam’s hungry and tired, but he has what he’s looking for. Now he just needs help making it happen.

* * *

“Didn’t expect to hear from you ever again,” she says when he opens the door. She’s a brunette now, another young and pretty meat suit, eyes soft doe brown and lips blood red. He wonders if the body’s alive, if the girl would wake up from the nightmare of a lifetime and walk away if Ruby left her.

“Didn’t expect it either,” Sam shrugs as he invites her in.

“One pet demon not enough for you?” the demon in Dean’s body chides from the desk chair. “You need another? Maybe one of each? Kinky Sammy, very kinky.”

Ruby circles the other demon warily, her big eyes wide, and then she spins around to glare at Sam. “You brought him back?” she demands, rage warring with incredulity. “I couldn’t get you to use your fucking powers when it counted but now you’re perfectly fine with – with this?”

“I didn’t,” Sam protests, though he’s not entirely sure that’s the truth. “He just – he just came back. I don’t know how, he just – he’s just back.”

“I’m just awesome like that,” the demon says, puffing himself up and looking determinedly proud. It’s a total Dean look.

“Oh god, he’s just as obnoxious as he was when he was human,” Ruby complains, but she runs her fingers down his bare chest and thumbs a nipple roughly.

“Don’t touch him,” Sam orders without thinking, and both Ruby and the demon snap their eyes to him with quirked eyebrows.

“So that’s how it is?” Ruby asks, turning her attention back to Sam. “You finally getting to fuck him, Sam? A nice side benefit of your brother coming back a demon, no more pesky moral qualms about incest.”

The demon grins. “Even Ruby knows? Jesus, was I the last one to figure it out, Sam? Somebody shoulda clued me in –

“Shut up, both of you!” Sam picks up the holy water bottle and brandishes it threateningly, and both demons grumble but comply – thank god because Sam can’t take much more talk about brotherfucking when Dean is sitting there half naked and wearing Sam’s jeans.

“I need you to help me with a binding ritual. Can you do that?”

Ruby nods, but her big brown eyes are full of questions. “What kind?”

Sam rubs a hand through his too-long hair, nervous. “I can’t have him out there running around killing people,” he says, and the demon snorts, as if to say hey, that’s what I do, I’m a demon. “And I can’t keep him tied up all the time either, god knows he’ll keep getting free no matter what I do, and I can’t keep hosing him down with holy water every ten minutes.”

“Fucking right,” the demon adds helpfully, “Fucking hurts like a bitch.”

Ruby nods empathically. “So wait,” she says, and Sam can see her putting the pieces together. “You’re gonna bind yourself to a demon.”

Sam swallows hard, sees the demon’s black eyes widen as he too starts to get it.

“Forever,” Ruby says, because that’s what the spell he’s found will do, and she knows it. Ironclad, no 30-day return policy, bound til death and maybe longer.

Sam nods, jaw set and mouth a thin determined line. “Yeah. Can you do it?”

“I can do it,” she says, and the demon starts to struggle, his black eyes darting between Sam and Ruby like he’s not sure which of them is crazier.

“Fuck no, what the hell are you talking about?” he demands, trying to kick his bare feet out of the ropes lashing them to the chair legs. “I don’t wanna be bound to you, don’t wanna be bound to anyone, jesuschrist, just spent a fucking century bound and – and – and – don’t do this, d-don’t do this –

The demon fights so hard he knocks the chair over and crashes to the floor, tries to squirm away even then, still muttering “don’t do this” but it’s more to himself than to Sam, like he doesn’t really expect anyone to listen to him.

Sam stares after him, mystified. “What the hell?”

“Precisely,” Ruby answers, “Hell.”

“What?” Fucking inscrutable demons.

“He’s only just regained his freedom after decades in hell, and –

“Decades? It was four months, Ruby. Not that four months in hell isn’t too long, but it’s four months.”

Ruby laughs then, but there’s no humor in it. The woman’s voice she’s using is cold and bitter, and Ruby rolls the words around on her tongue, slow and sadistic. “Oh Sam Sam Sam, how quaint of you to count time like that, like time topside has any bearing on time there. Only a day in your time, really. Who do you think claimed his body before you could torch it? He was adamant about it, I hear. Didn’t want anyone else inside it.” Ruby slants Sam a knowing smile. “Except you of course, Sam.”

“Fuck you.” It’s a lame response, but the only thing Sam can come up with, Ruby’s hitting him too hard and too fast.

“Me too? Well aren’t you the horny little devil, Sam Winchester.” She casts a flirty gaze in his direction, then looks back at the demon. “ But yes, decades, he was down there for decades. Months here for you to suffer, but lifetimes for Dean, I’m afraid. Can’t be sure exactly, it’s different for everyone.”

Sam’s stomach collapses in on itself, and he grabs the edge of the desk to steady himself. His voice comes out weak and strangled when he repeats it. “Decades? He was down there for – he – ohgod.”

Ruby puts a hand on his shoulder, awkward attempt at something she doesn’t really remember how to do. “Takes a while to force the humanity out of someone like Dean,” she says, almost gently. “Takes a lot to make someone forget who they were, what they cared about. After a while, there’s no right and wrong anymore, just what makes the pain start and what makes it stop.”

“What do you mean?” Sam asks, not wanting to know.

“How do you think you become a demon, Sam? You think it just happens?” Ruby follows him down as Sam sits heavily, legs not wanting to hold him up anymore. “No, it takes time, so much time, especially for the strong ones. The more they resist, the longer it takes, the more broken they are by the time it’s done. But everyone breaks, Sam. Sooner or later, everyone breaks. And that’s what does it.”

“Does what?” Ohgod, he doesn’t want to hear this. He watches the demon still slithering away from them, dragging the chair with him in his attempt to escape. Pathetic. Scared.

“That’s what destroys their humanity. Not the agony or the terror. Not how they break your bones and bloody your body, not the rape, not the torture. It’s the moment the offer comes – inflict this on someone else, and it will all be over, it will all stop. All you have to do is take this knife, wield this club, smash her ribs, sever his fingers, fuck his ass til you tear him up inside.”

“Stop.” Sam’s voice is so soft it’s barely audible. “Please.”

Ruby crouches at his feet, hands on his knees as tears track hot rivers down Sam’s cheeks. “You need to understand,” she insists, “Before you do this. You need to know what he is, what he’s done.

“No.” Desperate, clinging to disbelief

“Yes. That’s what makes us demons, that’s what we can never forget. And the best way to make sure you don’t succumb to regret, that the horror of what you did doesn’t destroy you, is to never go back and believe in right and wrong again. It’s why he can hurt you, Sam. Why he can kill you.”

“No.”

“You need to believe it, Sam, if I’m gonna do this. Otherwise, you’re just dead meat and it’s all for nothing.”

Sam knocks her hands from his knees, wipes the wetness from his cheeks as he crosses the room to where the demon’s gone still, black eyes open as he lays on his side, brow furrowed with worry. “Help me,” Sam says to her, and together he and Ruby right the chair, settle the demon back into it.

Sam bends so their eyes are level, stares hard into the blackness. “I can’t let you go,” he says evenly. “You know that, know that I won’t. You’ve known it from the moment Bobby called me, and maybe a part of you wanted that, wanted me to find you.”

The demon shakes his head, bare biceps bulging with the strain of trying to escape.

“So you’ve got a choice,” Sam continues, and his throat is aching with the emotion he’s trying to hold back, the scenario Ruby just painted for him hammering in the back of his mind. “I can exorcise you and send you back to hell, burn my brother’s body and end this once and for all.”
The demon’s eyes go wider and he sputters, panic writ across his fine features. “S-Sam, not – can’t –

“Or,” Sam continues, resting his hands on the demon’s thighs, hard muscle flexing under his fingers as the demon tries to twist away, “Or I can bind us together, so I know that you can’t just run off and kill someone.”

“I could kill you,” the demon says, but his voice is shaky.

“You could,” Sam allows, holding the demon’s gaze. “But that would make your stay in hell for nothing, so I’m betting you won’t.”

The demon tries to snort, play it off like that’s ridiculous, but he falters and it comes out more like a whimper.

“He probably doesn’t remember,” Ruby fills in helpfully. “A few decades in hell tends to push the human memories out.”

Sam leans in further, digs his fingers in tightly to the demon’s thighs like he can get his attention that way. “You sold your soul to save my life, Dean,” he says, and his voice cracks on his brother’s name. “You went there for me, to save me.” Sam’s fingers slide higher, his grip more desperate as tears sting his eyes. “Everything they did to you there, that was for me – for me, Dean – remember?”

The demon’s silent, black eyes empty and staring, and Sam longs for the flash of green, warm and sparkling and full of life. The loss hits him like a palpable thing, ache in his chest crushing him, stealing breath and hope. He lets his head fall forward, presses his face to the demon’s thighs and soaks the denim with his tears, despairing.

“Sammy,” the demon says, whispering. “Sam.”

It’s just a word, and demons lie, and Sam knows it. But not looking up at the sound of his name in his brother’s voice is as impossible as not crossing the devil’s trap when he heard it screamed out in agony at the warehouse. Sam raises his head slowly, finds the black eyes in his brother’s familiar face. “Dean,” he says simply, the one word that expresses everything Sam’s counting on. He stands and strips his tee shirt over his head, shakes his hair out of his eyes and wraps his fingers around the amulet that’s rested against his chest ever since the hellhounds shredded the flesh of his brother’s. The demon’s eyes track to it, and his mouth opens and closes silently before he looks up and meets Sam’s eyes again.

The demon swallows hard when Sam slips it over his head and settles the metal still warm from Sam’s body against his bare chest. Where it belongs.

“You’re gonna do it, aren’t you?” Ruby asks, already gathering the supplies he’d requested. “You stupid bastard.”

Chapter 4

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