runedgirl | Fade To Black (Not While Your Hand’s In Mine) Ch 8/18

Title: Fade To Black (Not While Your Hand’s In Mine) Ch 8/18
Author: runedgirl
Rating: NC17 for sexual content and violence
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 his brother.
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; 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.
With all the discussion of how Dean would be when he came back from hell recently, I wonder what Kripke and co. would think of this fic – definitely not a ‘Dean came back okay’ version. Hmmm.
Things take an unanticipated twist this chapter.

Chapter Eight
Arizona rolls past them the next afternoon, dust making the black surface of the Impala dull and speckled. The demon runs his hand over the roof before he gets in, settles into the passenger seat with a scowl. Twenty miles or so later he looks out the window, says “I used to drive.”

The simple truth of it hits Sam in the gut, makes his fingers clench on the worn leather of the wheel where he can still feel Dean’s handprints. “Yeah.”

“My car,” he says slowly, like he’s not sure.

Sam nods. “Your car. Your baby,” he amends, and the demon turns to see if Sam’s busting on him.
Sam gestures with one hand helplessly. “Hey, that’s what you called her. Not my fault you were all sentimental about a car.”

“Stupid,” the demon grumbles, turns back out the window.

Sam’s heart sinks. “Yeah,” he says.

They don’t speak again until the sun’s starting to set over the desert, violent fuschia and crimson streaked with orange as it gives up and sinks below the unbroken flat of the horizon. Just the beauty of it renews Sam’s determination, lets a tiny spark of hope creep back in.

“Dad gave you this car when you were fourteen,” Sam begins, his voice coming out scratchy from hours of silence. The demon doesn’t answer, but Sam can feel him shift on the seat, knows he’s listening. “You’d already been hunting for over a year, had taken out a creepy old ghost and a rawhead and even a vampire by then, but I don’t think you really felt like a man until Dad put those keys in your hand.”

There’s silence again, and Sam can feel the hopelessness pushing at the corners of his resolve, trying to get back in. He takes a breath, grips the wheel tighter, hangs onto his own memories hard enough for the both of them, and goes on. “The first thing you did was order me into the passenger seat.” Sam huffs a little laugh, remembering. “I was in the middle of math homework, didn’t wanna go, but you wouldn’t take no for an answer. Finally promised to buy me ice cream if I’d come with you.”

The demon snorts. “Bribed you, huh? You always were an easy little bitch, Sammy.”

“Hey, it was ice cream. And I was eleven!” Sam protests, the knot of hopelessness easing slightly as he pushes down on the pedal and takes them faster toward nowhere. “You were concentrating so hard on driving that you went right by the DQ the first time, and we got into a fight, and I made you so mad you grabbed me by the collar and shoved me.”

The demon raises an eyebrow defensively. “You probably deserved it,” he says gruffly.

“Probably,” Sam agrees. “But then of course you felt like shit, so I ended up with a banana split practically as big as I was. You took all the cherries though.” He grins at the memory, Dean stealing the cherries off the top and tying the stems into a knot with his tongue, spitting them one after another into Sam’s hand with a leering grin.

“I can still do that,” the demon smirks, and the fact that he remembers brings a flush to Sam’s cheeks, a burst of heat to his belly.

“I bet,” Sam smiles, rolling his eyes.

The demon settles back in the seat, long legs spread in a lazy sprawl and lean body stretched out healed and healthy again and mighty damn fine, Sam thinks. “Told ya Sammy, I can do wonderful things with my mouth. If you’d let me.”

Sam snorts and shoves a tape into the deck, but he knows he can’t entirely hide the way the crotch of his jeans stretches tight over his sudden unwanted erection, and his mind can’t forget the things Dean’s tongue could do with cherries.

* * *

The demon gets restless if they’re in the car too long, starts messing with the tape deck and making spitballs out of gum wrappers and straw papers. He doesn’t care that Sam’s driving, will casually pepper Sam’s cheek and neck with well-aimed wet little missiles, snickering as Sam gets redder and redder with anger. In fact, Sam’s pretty sure that’s the point – something to fight about is better than nothing to do, and the demon responds with a gleeful “Bring it on, Sammy” the second Sam’s patience (of Job) runs out and he screeches to a stop in the middle of nowhere to brandish the holy water.

Sam hasn’t actually used it in months, other than that one night in bar number fifteen, but it’s understood between the two of them that he could if he needed to. Sam needs to believe, even if it’s a delusion, that he’s got some power here, that if things go completely to hell (not that they haven’t already, he thinks bitterly), he’s got some recourse. The demon will grin, touched with mania, when Sam gets it out, throw open his arms like he’s not scared of it, like he wants it. He’s got too much energy coiled tight inside that compact muscular body, Sam can see it in the jittery thump of his fingers against the car window, the bounce of his knee that’s too fast to be in time with the 80’s rock Sam’s got blaring in an attempt to knock free a few of Dean’s memories. The demon’s under control just barely, and Sam wonders what it’s gonna take to push him over the edge again.

As it turns out, it’s not what Sam thought it would be.

They stumble onto the first hunt by accident, at the Big L Diner in Souderton, where the demon grumbled and goaded Sam into pulling off the road to get him a cheeseburger.

Sam tries to avoid anything that suggests the supernatural, just in case that might attract hunters who won’t be fooled by the demon’s sunglasses. His ears are still tuned to anything out of the ordinary, the way voices hush in small-town diners when bad things happen that people don’t understand. Like if they don’t talk about it too loudly, maybe it just won’t be real. Decades of investigating and researching are too ingrained to be let go completely, so Sam knows there’s something evil in Souderton after they’ve spent just one night there. A few minutes of overheard conversation about cattle disappearing (literally) into the clear blue sky and a few hapless ranchers doing the same, and a few hours on the laptop and Sam’s pretty sure it’s a harpy, just another myth that ends up being real. Sam doesn’t spare a second on being surprised – he’s sitting across from a demon, after all.

Calling it a hunt is a misnomer, since they don’t need to do any hunting at all – the thing attacks them the moment they walk in the door. Sam’s eyes barely have time to focus on the waitress slumped over the counter in a pool of red before it’s in his face, leathery wings churning the desert-dry air into heated bursts as its giant claws unfurl.

Sam never even gets his gun out, and fuck he feels stupid for being caught with his pants down, more embarrassed than terrified that he’s gonna die like this looking like an idiot in front of the fucking demon. There’s a bloodcurdling screech right up next to his ear, then the demon’s grabbing him from behind, hands clutching at Sam’s belt as he tries to pull them back towards the door. A burst of pain sears through Sam’s shoulder as the first of the deadly talons finds its mark, and then there’s the unmistakable deafening crack of a gunshot. The harpy takes off straight up, yanking Sam with it like a marionette. He’s terrifyingly airborne for a moment before a second shot whings by his ear and the creature releases him, crashing to the floor at the end of the counter, wings beating clumsily twice before it crumples to silence.

The demon doesn’t spare a “You okay” for Sam, just runs to finish the job, sinking a few more bullets into the by-now-quite-dead harpy and then adding a few swift kicks just to be sure. “Fucker,” he growls at it, with one last nudge of his boot.

“I’m fine, in case you were wondering,” Sam calls over, wincing and clutching his bleeding shoulder.

The demon spins to face him, grins happily. “Oh yeah, good,” he says, and hands Sam back his gun. He must have moved so fast Sam never felt him pull it from the back of his jeans. Huh.

“C’mon, we’ve gotta get out of here, there might be other – might be hunters coming.” Sam drives one-handed, blood soaking his torn shirt and his head swimming. He’s not sure if it’s from the pain or from the fact that he’s still trying to make sense of what just happened.

At the next motel, Sam disinfects the nasty wound, hissing at the pain, contorts himself to bandage it as well as he can manage. The demon watches from across the room, uncharacteristically calm. So unlike Dean, who would have insisted on doing the bandaging, making sure the wound was dressed and treated. Sam remembers his brother’s fingers, sure and certain, always gentle. One of the few times Dean would touch him, and Sam savored it, the love he could feel in his brother’s touch. Sam misses it – misses Dean – so suddenly and acutely, the pain of it overtakes the pain of his shoulder. The demon tilts his head at Sam’s quiet groan.

“You okay?” he asks. Finally.

“Peachy. Thanks for asking.”

“You’re welcome. Welcome for saving your dumbass life too.”

Sam wants to fire back something nasty, but it’s not a lie. He would be dead right now if not for the demon’s quick thinking.

“Why’d you do that?”

The demon shrugs, drops his expressionless black eyes. “Wasn’t sure if the binding would hold even if you were dead,” he says. “Didn’t wanna have to walk around tethered to your fucking corpse.”

Sam snorts. “Right.”

The demon yawns, stretches, shirt riding up to show Dean’s flat muscled belly. Even with his shoulder throbbing, Sam’s eyes track the movement without his intent, dropping lower as the demon unzips his jeans and strips to Dean’s black boxer-briefs. “We goin’ to bed now?” he asks, and Sam’s gaze jerks upward, guilty flush coloring his cheeks. “You probably should sleep, bein’ hurt and all.”

Sam wishes they had some whiskey, something to dull the pain enough to let him do just that. To make his brain stop spinning as he tries to process what happened tonight. He lies awake, acutely aware of the warmth of the demon’s body a foot away on the other side of the bed, the dip of the mattress every time he shifts. Thinks about the way the demon had his back, unexpected and achingly familiar.

“Can’t sleep?” The demon’s sleep-rough voice surprises him, makes him jump enough to ratchet the pain back up to intense.

“Ouch, fuck, what?”

“You’re not sleeping,” the demon wisely notes.

“I got grabbed by a fuckin’ harpy, no, I’m not sleeping,” Sam shoots back. He almost adds on, “Idiot,” but he’s still trying to feel some gratitude for the whole life-saving thing.

“It felt good,” says the demon.

“Huh?” Sam can’t believe the demon is gonna pick now for a conversation. “What did?”

“Killing that thing. It felt good.”

Oh. “Okay.” The demon isn’t given to long speeches, so Sam’s getting used to deciphering what he means in the few words he uses. Fuck knows Dean was always a man of few words anyway, so Sam’s had a lot of practice. “So killing – something bad – feels as good as killing humans?”

The demon considers. “Maybe. I guess.”

“Huh. Well, that’s good. I mean, it’s better than killing people. Definitely better than that.” Sam’s brain is really spinning now, pulling relentlessly toward some kind of hope that he desperately wants to believe in and making his body even more restless with the way his heart’s trying to flutter up out of his chest.

The demon rolls to his side to face him, Sam can see him outlined in the dim moonlight that the shabby curtains don’t completely block. “Sam?”

“Huh?”

“You sure you don’t want me to suck you off?”

“What? De – no. Jesus.”

“Might put you to sleep.”

Sam doesn’t want to move, doesn’t want to jar his shoulder, but he can feel the demon’s eyes on him, and fuck if the words aren’t getting to him, making his cock twitch and a gnawing start in his belly, and he should turn away. “I – I’m tired now anyway – I don’t – just, just go to sleep, okay?”

The demon sighs heavily, but he closes his eyes. “Stubborn sonofabitch,” he mutters, and then starts to snore.

The demon snores just like Dean, and the familiarity of it makes Sam’s eyes water. He thinks about what the demon did tonight, so much of Dean’s hunter instincts in the way he moved, the unerring aim of the shot and the look of determination on his face. Sam wonders if it’s still in there, the mantra Dean espoused for so long, the one he absorbed from Dad like he’d swallowed it whole without looking – saving people, hunting things. Wonders what it cost the demon to fall back to the reason he ended up in hell in the first place. Saving Sam.

Sam swipes at his eyes, rolls to his back to chase sleep. He thinks about what the demon said later, those dirty words in Dean’s sex-personified voice. Knows he won’t be able to stop hearing them tomorrow when he’s crouched on the other side of the bathroom door hiding from those black eyes to jerk off. Maybe won’t be able to stop hearing them ever.

“Sonofabitch,” he whispers, eyes still wide, staring at the ceiling.

Chapter Nine

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Fade To Black (Not While Your Hand’s In Mine) Ch 8/18

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