![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
runedgirlTitle:But Blood Is Thicker
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
runedgirl
Artist:chomaisky
Pairing:Sam/Dean, minor Dean/OFC and Dean/OMC
Rating:NC17
Word count:21,000
Warnings: violence, S9 story that’s AU after mid Season9 - though not by as much as I expected!
Summary: Desperate to escape his own self hatred, Dean takes on the mark of Cain and teams up with Crowley to go after Abbadon. Predictably, Crowley has his own agenda, manipulating Dean into succumbing completely to the lure of violence and power that the mark offers. Crowley seems to have won, but Sam has one last desperate idea to save his brother.
Later, when Dean looks back over that year, it will seem like everything changed long before the mark of Cain was seared onto his arm. That the mark was only the physical manifestation of the way life had worn away the things that kept Dean standing for three decades. Kept him the man he thought he should be—the one John, Bobby, Lisa, Ben… Sam… thought he should be. Maybe Dean hadn’t been that man for a very long time.
Maybe Crowley was just the only one who knew it.
* * *
September 2013
Desperation burns in Dean’s stomach as he sits beside his brother’s bed. A million times he’s been here, keeping watch over Sam while Sam bleeds or burns or hallucinates or refuses to wake up, and Dean thinks Sam has always been stubborn like that, keeping his eyes closed so he won’t see Dean sitting there, the seams of his heart busting open every second that Sam’s eyes don’t.
When Sam was two, he had a fever that went so high John dunked him in the old porcelain tub in the farmhouse they were squatting in at the edge of a nowhere town in Arizona. It had legs that looked like tiger claws, and Sammy was as white as the tub, his tiny body disappearing under the cloudy water as John held him down and Dean stood to one side, the thickest towel he could find held in both hands, his heart pounding triple time as he watched Sam turn paler and his lips tint blue. Please, Sammy, you’ve gotta open your eyes was on a loop in his head, so loud that Dean missed it when John told him to go get more Tylenol from the kitchen. He dropped the towel when he finally heard his father’s angry voice, scrambling up on a chair to reach the medicine and running back to the bathroom, afraid an extra few seconds would make the difference. They were in that bathroom a long time before Sam began to kick his chubby little legs and flail around in the tub, John cursing as he hauled Sam out.
“Damn it, Sam, don’t you ever do that again, you hear me?” John swore, and Dean didn’t understand back then why their father was so angry.
Dean held out the towel and they wrapped Sam up and put him to bed, and Dean stayed awake to watch over him. He fell asleep after the sun was already blazing through the curtainless windows, woke to the sight of Sammy’s hazel eyes staring blearily at him and forgot all about John’s anger the night before.
He understands that rage now; feels it settle bitter in his belly as the hours pass and the doctors and nurses gently pry away the hope he’s been clinging to. They mean well, he knows, but part of him wants to push them up against the nearest wall and bang their heads against it until they crack. Until those well-meaning words are shaken right out of their soft-spoken mouths and nobody is telling him that his brother is going to die. Again.
Dean made a deal the first time Sam died, and it shook them to the core, tore a rift between them that’s never fully healed. Dean went to hell and Sam paid a price, and then Sam turned around and went there too, and maybe they both lost their souls that time. They’re both still paying, Dean thinks, but even now, he knows he would do it again. It’s etched into every thought, every ripple of cerebral cortex, every flutter of his heart: save Sammy. It’s the first thing he thinks about in the morning and the last thing at night, no matter how far apart they are or whose bed Dean wakes up in or what the state of the universe is, right on up to and including the goddamn apocalypse.
“Sam,” Dean says out loud, leaning forward to brush his fingers over the back of Sam’s big hand. He looks so capable, so strong, even lying there covered with tubes and bruises; his skin as pale as it was the night he spent in the old bathtub; his hair disheveled, greasy where it lies across his face.
“Sammy, come on, man, prove ‘em all wrong.”
It’s a futile plea; Sam has never listened to words like that from Dean. Dean has rarely said them when Sam’s conscious anyway. There’s too much risk of adding “I love you,” or “I need you,” or “Don’t leave me.” Dean might own being selfish when it comes to Sam, but he doesn’t have to spell it out for his brother.
Later, Sam won’t believe it, but it’s not easy for Dean to say yes to Gadreel. By the time the ultimatum comes, the stakes are too high and time is too short. Dean’s been boxed about the ears so many times that everything sounds underwater, the angel’s voice reverberating painfully in his head. He stumbles around the room, heart thumping wildly and painfully as he tries to catch his breath, smearing his own blood to give them time, but there isn’t any and he knows it. He wishes it was Cas, someone Dean could come close to trusting, no matter the water under that bridge. He wishes it hadn’t come down to this, a decision that feels both impossible and inevitable.
“Dean,” Gadreel says, infuriatingly calm while the world is closing in on them, Death holding out his bony hand, ready to take Sam. Sam doesn’t know there’s another way, doesn’t know it doesn’t have to be his time, doesn’t know how much Dean loves him, and the words come quickly then, Gadreel channeling the things Dean never says, never wants Sam to know.
“There ain’t no me if there ain’t no you.”
It’s the truest thing Dean’s mouth has ever spoken, more Dean than Dean, and Sam doesn’t push him away, doesn’t turn away. Doesn’t go.
When Sam opens his eyes, they look just like they did that morning in Arizona, and Dean can’t bring himself to regret that it’s an angel looking back at him and not just his little brother.
* * *
The regret comes later. After Dean has run away from too many opportunities to tell Sam the truth, fear choking the words back every time. After he’s tried to make a joke of it and lied to Sam’s face and told himself that he had no choice. The regret comes when Kevin is lying dead on the bunker floor and Sam is gone anyway, taken by Gadreel instead of Death, but gone.
When Dean turns to Crowley for help, it’s the next step down a slippery slope that started long before that night in the church when the Winchesters committed to each other, Crowley their witness. It’s not the first time Dean is willing to get into bed with the devil for Sam’s sake, and if he’s honest with himself, it probably won’t be the last.
He expects Sam to be angry, but the depth of it, the intensity, takes Dean by surprise. He could have dealt with Sam’s fists, understands that he has to pay a price for taking the choice away from Sam and opening the door to such a horrible outcome. He betrayed his brother’s trust; he lied outright, more than once. But the apology dies on his tongue at the coldness in his brother’s eyes, replaced by obstinate anger. He’s backed into a corner and Sam’s standing there with all the weapons, ready to tear him to pieces.
“You didn’t do it for me, you did it for you.”
“Family is everything that’s ever gone wrong between us.”
“We can work together, but brothers?”
That’s the knife that cuts the deepest. That’s the mark that transforms him from the inside, long before he meets Cain and takes on the visible one. Sam’s words deaden something in Dean, something that’s always kept the darkness inside from taking over. But it’s Dean who lets it happen.
* * *
Once the mark is on him, the booze works for almost two months. Dean drinks when he wants to take up the blade; drinks more when he remembers how it felt, the power snaking up his arm, filling up his insides, energizing him with purpose. It’s a sense of power he hasn’t felt for a long time; maybe never on this mortal plane. His fingers grip the handle of the blade like sense memory, from decades of wielding instruments of torture in hell, the blood hot and sticky between his fingers as he held on and pushed through skin and flesh and bone. The rush when he slices off Magnus’s head is the same deep satisfaction he felt in hell, in Purgatory. Immediately, he wants to do it again. Wants to do it more, faster, deeper, more ruthless. Wants to make blood flow in rivers until everyone has paid.
It’s only Sam’s voice that pulls him back that first time, dragging him reluctantly up from a different place, from being a different creature. He doesn’t want to return to himself; he wonders if Sam knows that.
There’s a moment, a flash of time that plays out in slow motion, when Magnus is dead on the floor and all Dean sees are the two living beings in the room with him. The demon and the human, that’s all his brain tells him. They’re alive, and the blade is in his hand, and he’s looking from one to the other assessing who gets to die first.
Sam says his name a second later, and the thick red fog clears enough to make Dean’s heart stutter. Sam. That’s Sam. And he was just about to…
Dean says no the next time Sam finds a hunt for them. Sam goes solo, and Dean pushes away the concern that used to orchestrate his very existence. Sam calls and Dean hesitates, thinks about throwing his phone across the room and letting it smash against the wall, guts spilling out. Sam hunts and Dean goes to the bar and shoots pool, moving too fast inside to be comfortable in his own skin, pacing like a caged animal when he tries to stay still. Crowley watches him, taunts him like a cruel visitor at the zoo—brave from just outside the bars—and Dean knows Crowley can see the poison flowing in Dean’s blood. Crowley relishes the darkness in Dean, wants to nurture it and feed it and make it grow until it’s all there is.
Sometimes Dean wants that, too. Wants to walk away from the Sam-shaped noose around his neck, leave behind the very last thing he cares about in this world so he doesn’t feel at all. What good have feelings ever been? More trouble than they’re worth, 99% pain and the occasional 1% burst of pleasure.
He fucks women whose names he doesn’t ask and men who won’t ask for his, takes his 1% and goes back to the bunker alone, and still he thinks about the blade, the mark on his arm throbbing in time with his heartbeat, a constant, incessant, insistent urge keeping him on edge.
He waits until Sam is on a job a few hours away to pick up his cell. It only takes a minute for the conversation to get heated.
“That’s it? You’re going after Abaddon, that’s all you’re gonna say?”
Sam’s yelling so loudly that the cell phone is vibrating against Dean’s ear. All the way from Hagersville, two hundred miles away, Dean can feel Sam’s rage. It should make him hesitate, or reconsider. It should make him worry about doing something Sam doesn’t want him to do. That old familiar worry he’s felt all his life, the fear that he’ll do something wrong and the people he loves will leave. He won’t be a good enough hunter, and one day Dad won’t come back. He won’t be a good enough brother, and one day Sam won’t come back, either.
Dean smiles. There’s none of that now. There’s only the cold, clear certainty that he’s doing the right thing—the thing he’s supposed to do. The thing he needs to do.
“Dean! Are you listening to me at all? There’s something wrong with you, man, can’t you see that? You haven’t been right for months—you’re not thinking clearly!”
“There’s always been something wrong with me, Sam.”
That stops his little brother’s tirade. Sam sucks in a breath, and Dean can imagine the shocked look on his face, the way his eyebrows draw together as he frowns.
“What the hell does that mean?”
Dean shrugs. Sam doesn’t want to know, not really. There are so many things wrong with Dean, so many dark thoughts that twist through his brain at night. So many that are about Sam.
“I’m a killer, Sam. I’ve told you before. I’m poison. I don’t want you around me. I can do this on my own.”
Dean can almost imagine Sam’s huff of displeasure. His voice drops a little; he’s gentling it, trying to get through to Dean. If Dean could still feel anything, that would warm his heart a little. It’s almost like Sam cares. There was a time when Dean would have given anything to believe that.
“That’s the mark talking,” Sam insists.
“No, it’s me. It’s been me before. Have you forgotten who tricked you into letting Gadreel possess you and then lied to you about it for months?”
There’s a pause, and Dean wonders if it’s because Sam is still angry enough to concede the point, or if he just didn’t expect Dean to go there. He smiles darkly, thinking about how Sam would feel if Dean told him all the ways he’s wrong inside.
“I haven’t forgotten,” Sam says, and he’s speaking slowly now. “That doesn’t make you poison, Dean.”
The urge to laugh hits him suddenly, and he stifles it with effort. It would just egg Sam on, make him more likely to chase after Dean and muck up his plan to take out Abaddon.
“Don’t change your tune now, Sam,” he says instead.
“You know I never said that.”
“Yeah, well, you said a lot of things. And I heard every one of them. Gotta go, I don’t want this lead to dry up.”
“Dean—“
It’s the last thing Dean hears before he disconnects the call. He swings his duffel over his shoulder and climbs the stairs, pausing to move a chess piece on the board still set up on the landing. The Men of Letters and their stupid ineffectual way of trying to figure things out. Dean’s got all the figuring he needs in the blade at his side. He doesn’t look back at the bunker, at the tables with their matching lamps where he and Sam have been working side by side and miles apart. He doesn’t answer his phone again.
* * *
“So you’ve finally made a break from the Moose.”
Crowley is waiting at the appointed place, a bar five hours in the opposite direction from where Sam is. That puts a good eight hours between them. Crowley slides a beer across the bar and winks flirtatiously.
“Buy you a drink, handsome?”
“Fuck off,” Dean answers, as expected, but the beer is cold and goes down easy. “So where are we headed?”
“Word is she’s in South Dakota. Fancy a road trip? Those are the best buddy comedies.”
“Another,” Dean tells the bartender, ignoring Crowley’s smile. It will be a relief to have someone who’s not judging him riding shotgun. He wishes it didn’t have to be Crowley, though. Maybe that hot brunette making eyes at him from the corner.
Crowley follows his line of sight and scowls. If Dean didn’t know better, he’d think Crowley was jealous. Maybe he is.
“Be back in a few. Order me another.”
“Seriously? Do we have time for this?” Crowley is petulant, and it makes Dean smile.
“Won’t take that long,” he says, and gets the expected eye roll. It’s not as satisfying as getting a reaction from his brother, but it will do.
The girl is warm and eager; lets him hold her head in place and thrust roughly, his fingers tangled in her long hair. It doesn’t take long.
“What the fuck?” she says when he zips up and starts to turn away. “That’s it? You get yours and then it’s adios?”
A vicious quip is on the tip of his tongue, but he bites it back, rubbing at his arm. This is something he’s always prided himself on. It’s unnerving that he doesn’t care now, doesn’t want to bother.
“Sorry, sweetheart,” he drawls, flashing her a smile he doesn’t feel. “Of course not.”
He goes to his knees and pushes up her skirt, and she moans but it’s not what he wants and his fingers leave bruises on her thighs.
Crowley makes a face at his swollen lips and the way his mouth glistens. “Seriously?”
Dean shrugs, the thrumming under his skin no better for the quick-and-dirty climax or the fifteen minutes of distraction. He drains his beer and slams the bottle down. “Let’s go.”
Crowley doesn’t ask him to change the music, though he does have an annoying habit of singing along from time to time. AC/DC is apparently his favorite, and he has a disconcertingly good voice, which makes his singing even more annoying than Sam’s.
* * *
Sam is on his brother’s tail fairly quickly. Dean has a day-long head start, but he’s not being particularly careful about covering his tracks.
The third bar is the charm.
“Oh, yeah, that guy,” the bartender says as he puts a beer in front of Sam. “He was here all right. You might wanna speak to Darla. She spent a little time with him, if you catch my drift.”
So Dean was unhurried enough to get laid before he took off after Abaddon. Sam’s not sure why that makes him even more furious. Dean hasn’t shown any interest in women for months. Is it being away from Sam that’s cheering him up and jump-starting his libido? Figures.
The worry that his anger pushed Dean down this dangerous road gnaws at Sam, alternating with bursts of rage. Why couldn’t Dean just apologize? Why couldn’t he just listen? Thirty years of being brothers, and Dean still can’t see Sam as he really is. Dean still sees his little brother, a kid who Dean has to take care of and keep close, and that’s not all Sam is anymore. Was it really too much to want Dean to acknowledge that for once?
“You wanted to know about that Dean guy?”
Darla leans in, looking Sam over appreciatively. She’s pretty, looks like Dean’s type.
“Uh, yeah. You spoke to him?”
“Well, we didn’t do a whole lot of talking.” Darla laughs, and Sam forces a smile.
“I’m sure you didn’t. Was he—did he come in with another guy?”
Darla nods. “The Brit with the snobby attitude?”
“That would be the one.”
“You ask me, that guy was jealous. Does Dean swing both ways?”
Sam splutters into his beer. “What? No. I mean, I don’t know. Why do you ask that?”
Darla shrugs. “Just the way that guy looked at him. And they left together.”
“Did he say where they were going?”
Darla shakes her head. “Nope. Like I said, he wasn’t very talkative. Frankly, I thought for a minute there he was gonna be a real dick, just out for himself, you know?”
“Out for himself?”
“Yeah, you know, he got his and then wham bam thank you ma’am, I’m outta here.”
Sam has always known way more than he should about his brother’s sexual habits. And that doesn’t sound like Dean at all.
“Turns out he just needed a little reminder,” Darla continues, smiling. “Totally worth the wait.”
“Great,” Sam says, trying to cut her off before she tells him even more about Dean’s sexual prowess, like Sam hasn’t already heard it all from Dean himself. “One more thing—about what time was that?”
“Around midnight. Why?”
“Thanks again, you’ve been very helpful.”
“Sure thing,” Darla shrugs and walks away.
The bartender lets him into the back room to review the surveillance feed from the night before. At twenty minutes after midnight, the Impala roars across the parking lot and onto the highway. Crowley is riding shotgun.
In my seat.
The thought rankles. Sam pays his tab and leaves, unwanted images of Darla and his brother following him into the parking lot. Half their lives, people have wondered if Dean wasn’t exactly straight. Sam has wondered himself, more than once. The idea is a dangerous one, leading to things Sam knows he shouldn’t think about, things his imagination shouldn’t conjure. He rolls down the window of the rental car and distracts himself with the cool night breeze as he drives.
He makes it to Morristown before the fatigue catches up with him and he pulls into a motel for the night. The smallest room, a single twin bed shoved against the wall. It hurts more than he expects it to.
That night, Sam has the dream for the first time.
He’s in a cornfield, stalks so high he can’t see over them fencing him in on all sides. He can hear shouting and screaming in the distance, and the stench of sulfur hangs in the air, acrid and bitter. Sam’s hacking his way through the field, swinging a machete back and forth as he tries to force his way through the corn, but every time he cuts it back, more appears in its place, enclosing him more and more tightly. The stalks whip against his face, pound against his back, like they’re animate and out to get him, trying to keep him from getting to his brother.
Dean is up ahead, where the noise is coming from, but he’s too far away to hear Sam calling his name, yelling for him to stop, to wait. Sam’s lungs burn as he gasps for breath, his legs like jelly, shaking so much he can hardly stand. Again and again he falls, corncobs crunching under his knees as he crawls, fingers in the dirt, the stalks falling on his back pushing him down.
“Dean!” He can hear himself screaming, so close now that he can feel the warmth of the fire up ahead, where Dean is. He raises his head and he can see the dark silhouette of his brother inside the farm house, caught in the firelight as he raises his arm, sparks flying off the first blade and the mark glowing red and angry on his forearm.
“Noooooo!”
Sam’s screaming it aloud when he wakes up, drenched in sweat and shaking with an adrenaline rush of panic. It’s only 6 AM, but he gets up and on the road, the need to find his brother suddenly more urgent.
It was just a dream, he tells himself. But it doesn’t feel that way.
* * *
Three days later, Sam almost catches up to Dean and Crowley at a diner off Route 24. It’s just past dusk when Sam pulls into the parking lot. There are six cars outside, but the diner itself is dark. Only the “Big L” sign, blinking on and off like a giant bug zapper, illuminates the building. Sam pats the knife at his hip, the gun at his back. He wishes it were his brother there, the way it should be.
There’s no sound other than the hum of the sign, but Sam still opens the door quickly, gun in hand, senses on high alert. In the dim light, he can make out bodies on the floor. Three of them, unmoving. Another is slumped over the counter, still seated on her stool like she decided to take a nap in the middle of a meal. Sam checks each of them, two fingers to the pulse point. Dead, every one.
He finds the master switch and flips it, bright light abruptly flooding the little diner. Sam spins, finger twitching on the trigger of his gun, ready. Nothing happens.
There’s another body near the door to the kitchen, a hand outstretched. The black-and-white tile floor is smeared with red; there’s blood on the counter, on the backs of the dingy beige diner seats.
Sam’s sure these were demons; the smell of sulfur is still in the air. Whether the people unfortunate enough to be meatsuits were alive or dead before they were killed this time is anyone’s guess.
The clatter of something metallic in the kitchen startles Sam out of his thoughts. He kicks the door open quickly, searching for the source.
It doesn’t take long to find.
There’s a man on the floor, an overturned frying pan beside him. He’s covered in blood, but his eyes are open, and fuck, Sam’s seen that look before.
“Hey, hey, it’s okay, I’m gonna get you help,” he says, kneeling down beside the man. There’s a lot of blood on the floor. Too much.
“He—he was a madman,” the man splutters. Sam can hear the rattle in his chest that says he has a punctured lung.
Sam thinks about telling him not to waste his strength, not to talk, but it’s clear it won’t make any difference.
“I could see the whole thing—from inside. But I couldn’t speak, couldn’t beg for him not to kill me too.”
Sam swallows hard. “You were possessed. How long?”
The man’s eyes are rolling up. “Don’t know. Five—six weeks. Long time.”
He coughs, blood spraying everywhere.
“Kept hoping,” the man says, and his voice is thinning, barely projecting.
“Take it easy,” Sam says, and puts a hand on the man’s shoulder, tries to ease the fear of it if not the pain.
The man coughs again, then rallies.
“They drove a big black car. Impala. Two—two of them,” he gasps, and then falls silent. Sam stays until his chest stops rising and falling.
“Fuck,” he says aloud as he gets to his feet. “What the fuck are you doing, Dean?”
The question gnaws at Sam as he drives. He can track the Impala more easily than anything else in the universe, and right now, it’s like the car wants him to find them. She’s digging her tires in, hugging the road and then veering wide so Sam can’t miss the familiar treads in the mud. It’s not like Dean to drive her so erratically.
A lot of things aren’t like Dean right now.
Five hours and one quickly corrected wrong turn later, Sam finds Dean’s baby in the parking lot of a dive bar a few miles off the highway. Her tires are muddy and her usually sleek black coat is dulled with a thin coat of road dust.
“Sorry, baby,” Sam says as he walks past her, running a finger gently through the dust to leave a thin streak of shiny black. “Dean doesn’t mean it.”
Sam can fix this. He’s sure of it.
It’s midnight and the bar is crowded, a bunch of guys and a few women shooting pool. Dean is among them.
Sam breathes a sigh of relief just seeing his brother in one piece.
Dean leans over the table and sweeps the balls into place with his elbows, the way he has since he was fourteen and trying to pass as much older, hustling pool to keep Sam in Lucky Charms and SpaghettiOs. Sam remembers following him sometimes to whatever seedy bar was in walking distance, making himself invisible in the corner while he watched Dean swagger like he wasn’t just a kid himself. Guys would scoff and wager against the skinny kid with the too-pretty face, laughing as Dean let his first few shots go wide. He’d get better slowly, never letting anyone catch on until it was too late. Sometimes Sam swore that Dean distracted them on purpose, licking his too-full lips and letting his cheeks pink when the guys looked too long, like he was some blushing virgin (which Sam knew wasn’t true; playing pool wasn’t the only activity he’d spied on his brother doing). It wasn’t until Dean had them where he wanted them that he would lean over the table, slow and easy like he knew half of them were eyeballing his ass, and gather the balls into a perfect triangle.
Sometimes he came close to getting beat up over it, but Sam had an idea that the moment was worth it—the expressions on their faces when they knew he’d beaten them.
Dean has that same swagger now, but he can pull it off better. The line of his jaw is more severe, darkened by stubble, but his eyes are just as pretty, and the almost-beard just makes his mouth more obvious. The women and some of the men are watching him appreciatively, one of them adding a low whistle. He breaks and cleans up easily, and his opponents grumble but walk away. Apparently there’s nothing on the line this time but their pride. So it’s not money Dean’s after. Sam scans the women gathered around the table, wondering whose gaze Dean will return.
A tall young man with hair almost down to his shoulders pushes through the girls, a glass of whisky in his hand. He holds it out to Dean, and Sam waits for Dean to rebuff him with a snarky comment that Sam will be able to decipher from the other side of the room.
Dean pauses, cue still in hand. His eyes fall on the drink, then flicker up to the man’s face, and Sam’s surprised to see Dean’s lip curl in a smirk. He doesn’t say anything, but he lifts the cue stick to put it back on the rack, running one hand up its length slowly and deliberately while he runs his eyes up and down the man in front of him. There’s no mistaking the look, or the gesture.
Part Two
Author:
runedgirlArtist:
chomaiskyPairing:Sam/Dean, minor Dean/OFC and Dean/OMC
Rating:NC17
Word count:21,000
Warnings: violence, S9 story that’s AU after mid Season9 - though not by as much as I expected!
Summary: Desperate to escape his own self hatred, Dean takes on the mark of Cain and teams up with Crowley to go after Abbadon. Predictably, Crowley has his own agenda, manipulating Dean into succumbing completely to the lure of violence and power that the mark offers. Crowley seems to have won, but Sam has one last desperate idea to save his brother.
Later, when Dean looks back over that year, it will seem like everything changed long before the mark of Cain was seared onto his arm. That the mark was only the physical manifestation of the way life had worn away the things that kept Dean standing for three decades. Kept him the man he thought he should be—the one John, Bobby, Lisa, Ben… Sam… thought he should be. Maybe Dean hadn’t been that man for a very long time.
Maybe Crowley was just the only one who knew it.
* * *
September 2013
Desperation burns in Dean’s stomach as he sits beside his brother’s bed. A million times he’s been here, keeping watch over Sam while Sam bleeds or burns or hallucinates or refuses to wake up, and Dean thinks Sam has always been stubborn like that, keeping his eyes closed so he won’t see Dean sitting there, the seams of his heart busting open every second that Sam’s eyes don’t.
When Sam was two, he had a fever that went so high John dunked him in the old porcelain tub in the farmhouse they were squatting in at the edge of a nowhere town in Arizona. It had legs that looked like tiger claws, and Sammy was as white as the tub, his tiny body disappearing under the cloudy water as John held him down and Dean stood to one side, the thickest towel he could find held in both hands, his heart pounding triple time as he watched Sam turn paler and his lips tint blue. Please, Sammy, you’ve gotta open your eyes was on a loop in his head, so loud that Dean missed it when John told him to go get more Tylenol from the kitchen. He dropped the towel when he finally heard his father’s angry voice, scrambling up on a chair to reach the medicine and running back to the bathroom, afraid an extra few seconds would make the difference. They were in that bathroom a long time before Sam began to kick his chubby little legs and flail around in the tub, John cursing as he hauled Sam out.
“Damn it, Sam, don’t you ever do that again, you hear me?” John swore, and Dean didn’t understand back then why their father was so angry.
Dean held out the towel and they wrapped Sam up and put him to bed, and Dean stayed awake to watch over him. He fell asleep after the sun was already blazing through the curtainless windows, woke to the sight of Sammy’s hazel eyes staring blearily at him and forgot all about John’s anger the night before.
He understands that rage now; feels it settle bitter in his belly as the hours pass and the doctors and nurses gently pry away the hope he’s been clinging to. They mean well, he knows, but part of him wants to push them up against the nearest wall and bang their heads against it until they crack. Until those well-meaning words are shaken right out of their soft-spoken mouths and nobody is telling him that his brother is going to die. Again.
Dean made a deal the first time Sam died, and it shook them to the core, tore a rift between them that’s never fully healed. Dean went to hell and Sam paid a price, and then Sam turned around and went there too, and maybe they both lost their souls that time. They’re both still paying, Dean thinks, but even now, he knows he would do it again. It’s etched into every thought, every ripple of cerebral cortex, every flutter of his heart: save Sammy. It’s the first thing he thinks about in the morning and the last thing at night, no matter how far apart they are or whose bed Dean wakes up in or what the state of the universe is, right on up to and including the goddamn apocalypse.
“Sam,” Dean says out loud, leaning forward to brush his fingers over the back of Sam’s big hand. He looks so capable, so strong, even lying there covered with tubes and bruises; his skin as pale as it was the night he spent in the old bathtub; his hair disheveled, greasy where it lies across his face.
“Sammy, come on, man, prove ‘em all wrong.”
It’s a futile plea; Sam has never listened to words like that from Dean. Dean has rarely said them when Sam’s conscious anyway. There’s too much risk of adding “I love you,” or “I need you,” or “Don’t leave me.” Dean might own being selfish when it comes to Sam, but he doesn’t have to spell it out for his brother.
Later, Sam won’t believe it, but it’s not easy for Dean to say yes to Gadreel. By the time the ultimatum comes, the stakes are too high and time is too short. Dean’s been boxed about the ears so many times that everything sounds underwater, the angel’s voice reverberating painfully in his head. He stumbles around the room, heart thumping wildly and painfully as he tries to catch his breath, smearing his own blood to give them time, but there isn’t any and he knows it. He wishes it was Cas, someone Dean could come close to trusting, no matter the water under that bridge. He wishes it hadn’t come down to this, a decision that feels both impossible and inevitable.
“Dean,” Gadreel says, infuriatingly calm while the world is closing in on them, Death holding out his bony hand, ready to take Sam. Sam doesn’t know there’s another way, doesn’t know it doesn’t have to be his time, doesn’t know how much Dean loves him, and the words come quickly then, Gadreel channeling the things Dean never says, never wants Sam to know.
“There ain’t no me if there ain’t no you.”
It’s the truest thing Dean’s mouth has ever spoken, more Dean than Dean, and Sam doesn’t push him away, doesn’t turn away. Doesn’t go.
When Sam opens his eyes, they look just like they did that morning in Arizona, and Dean can’t bring himself to regret that it’s an angel looking back at him and not just his little brother.
* * *
The regret comes later. After Dean has run away from too many opportunities to tell Sam the truth, fear choking the words back every time. After he’s tried to make a joke of it and lied to Sam’s face and told himself that he had no choice. The regret comes when Kevin is lying dead on the bunker floor and Sam is gone anyway, taken by Gadreel instead of Death, but gone.
When Dean turns to Crowley for help, it’s the next step down a slippery slope that started long before that night in the church when the Winchesters committed to each other, Crowley their witness. It’s not the first time Dean is willing to get into bed with the devil for Sam’s sake, and if he’s honest with himself, it probably won’t be the last.
He expects Sam to be angry, but the depth of it, the intensity, takes Dean by surprise. He could have dealt with Sam’s fists, understands that he has to pay a price for taking the choice away from Sam and opening the door to such a horrible outcome. He betrayed his brother’s trust; he lied outright, more than once. But the apology dies on his tongue at the coldness in his brother’s eyes, replaced by obstinate anger. He’s backed into a corner and Sam’s standing there with all the weapons, ready to tear him to pieces.
“You didn’t do it for me, you did it for you.”
“Family is everything that’s ever gone wrong between us.”
“We can work together, but brothers?”
That’s the knife that cuts the deepest. That’s the mark that transforms him from the inside, long before he meets Cain and takes on the visible one. Sam’s words deaden something in Dean, something that’s always kept the darkness inside from taking over. But it’s Dean who lets it happen.
* * *
Once the mark is on him, the booze works for almost two months. Dean drinks when he wants to take up the blade; drinks more when he remembers how it felt, the power snaking up his arm, filling up his insides, energizing him with purpose. It’s a sense of power he hasn’t felt for a long time; maybe never on this mortal plane. His fingers grip the handle of the blade like sense memory, from decades of wielding instruments of torture in hell, the blood hot and sticky between his fingers as he held on and pushed through skin and flesh and bone. The rush when he slices off Magnus’s head is the same deep satisfaction he felt in hell, in Purgatory. Immediately, he wants to do it again. Wants to do it more, faster, deeper, more ruthless. Wants to make blood flow in rivers until everyone has paid.
It’s only Sam’s voice that pulls him back that first time, dragging him reluctantly up from a different place, from being a different creature. He doesn’t want to return to himself; he wonders if Sam knows that.
There’s a moment, a flash of time that plays out in slow motion, when Magnus is dead on the floor and all Dean sees are the two living beings in the room with him. The demon and the human, that’s all his brain tells him. They’re alive, and the blade is in his hand, and he’s looking from one to the other assessing who gets to die first.
Sam says his name a second later, and the thick red fog clears enough to make Dean’s heart stutter. Sam. That’s Sam. And he was just about to…
Dean says no the next time Sam finds a hunt for them. Sam goes solo, and Dean pushes away the concern that used to orchestrate his very existence. Sam calls and Dean hesitates, thinks about throwing his phone across the room and letting it smash against the wall, guts spilling out. Sam hunts and Dean goes to the bar and shoots pool, moving too fast inside to be comfortable in his own skin, pacing like a caged animal when he tries to stay still. Crowley watches him, taunts him like a cruel visitor at the zoo—brave from just outside the bars—and Dean knows Crowley can see the poison flowing in Dean’s blood. Crowley relishes the darkness in Dean, wants to nurture it and feed it and make it grow until it’s all there is.
Sometimes Dean wants that, too. Wants to walk away from the Sam-shaped noose around his neck, leave behind the very last thing he cares about in this world so he doesn’t feel at all. What good have feelings ever been? More trouble than they’re worth, 99% pain and the occasional 1% burst of pleasure.
He fucks women whose names he doesn’t ask and men who won’t ask for his, takes his 1% and goes back to the bunker alone, and still he thinks about the blade, the mark on his arm throbbing in time with his heartbeat, a constant, incessant, insistent urge keeping him on edge.
He waits until Sam is on a job a few hours away to pick up his cell. It only takes a minute for the conversation to get heated.
“That’s it? You’re going after Abaddon, that’s all you’re gonna say?”
Sam’s yelling so loudly that the cell phone is vibrating against Dean’s ear. All the way from Hagersville, two hundred miles away, Dean can feel Sam’s rage. It should make him hesitate, or reconsider. It should make him worry about doing something Sam doesn’t want him to do. That old familiar worry he’s felt all his life, the fear that he’ll do something wrong and the people he loves will leave. He won’t be a good enough hunter, and one day Dad won’t come back. He won’t be a good enough brother, and one day Sam won’t come back, either.
Dean smiles. There’s none of that now. There’s only the cold, clear certainty that he’s doing the right thing—the thing he’s supposed to do. The thing he needs to do.
“Dean! Are you listening to me at all? There’s something wrong with you, man, can’t you see that? You haven’t been right for months—you’re not thinking clearly!”
“There’s always been something wrong with me, Sam.”
That stops his little brother’s tirade. Sam sucks in a breath, and Dean can imagine the shocked look on his face, the way his eyebrows draw together as he frowns.
“What the hell does that mean?”
Dean shrugs. Sam doesn’t want to know, not really. There are so many things wrong with Dean, so many dark thoughts that twist through his brain at night. So many that are about Sam.
“I’m a killer, Sam. I’ve told you before. I’m poison. I don’t want you around me. I can do this on my own.”
Dean can almost imagine Sam’s huff of displeasure. His voice drops a little; he’s gentling it, trying to get through to Dean. If Dean could still feel anything, that would warm his heart a little. It’s almost like Sam cares. There was a time when Dean would have given anything to believe that.
“That’s the mark talking,” Sam insists.
“No, it’s me. It’s been me before. Have you forgotten who tricked you into letting Gadreel possess you and then lied to you about it for months?”
There’s a pause, and Dean wonders if it’s because Sam is still angry enough to concede the point, or if he just didn’t expect Dean to go there. He smiles darkly, thinking about how Sam would feel if Dean told him all the ways he’s wrong inside.
“I haven’t forgotten,” Sam says, and he’s speaking slowly now. “That doesn’t make you poison, Dean.”
The urge to laugh hits him suddenly, and he stifles it with effort. It would just egg Sam on, make him more likely to chase after Dean and muck up his plan to take out Abaddon.
“Don’t change your tune now, Sam,” he says instead.
“You know I never said that.”
“Yeah, well, you said a lot of things. And I heard every one of them. Gotta go, I don’t want this lead to dry up.”
“Dean—“
It’s the last thing Dean hears before he disconnects the call. He swings his duffel over his shoulder and climbs the stairs, pausing to move a chess piece on the board still set up on the landing. The Men of Letters and their stupid ineffectual way of trying to figure things out. Dean’s got all the figuring he needs in the blade at his side. He doesn’t look back at the bunker, at the tables with their matching lamps where he and Sam have been working side by side and miles apart. He doesn’t answer his phone again.
* * *
“So you’ve finally made a break from the Moose.”
Crowley is waiting at the appointed place, a bar five hours in the opposite direction from where Sam is. That puts a good eight hours between them. Crowley slides a beer across the bar and winks flirtatiously.
“Buy you a drink, handsome?”
“Fuck off,” Dean answers, as expected, but the beer is cold and goes down easy. “So where are we headed?”
“Word is she’s in South Dakota. Fancy a road trip? Those are the best buddy comedies.”
“Another,” Dean tells the bartender, ignoring Crowley’s smile. It will be a relief to have someone who’s not judging him riding shotgun. He wishes it didn’t have to be Crowley, though. Maybe that hot brunette making eyes at him from the corner.
Crowley follows his line of sight and scowls. If Dean didn’t know better, he’d think Crowley was jealous. Maybe he is.
“Be back in a few. Order me another.”
“Seriously? Do we have time for this?” Crowley is petulant, and it makes Dean smile.
“Won’t take that long,” he says, and gets the expected eye roll. It’s not as satisfying as getting a reaction from his brother, but it will do.
The girl is warm and eager; lets him hold her head in place and thrust roughly, his fingers tangled in her long hair. It doesn’t take long.
“What the fuck?” she says when he zips up and starts to turn away. “That’s it? You get yours and then it’s adios?”
A vicious quip is on the tip of his tongue, but he bites it back, rubbing at his arm. This is something he’s always prided himself on. It’s unnerving that he doesn’t care now, doesn’t want to bother.
“Sorry, sweetheart,” he drawls, flashing her a smile he doesn’t feel. “Of course not.”
He goes to his knees and pushes up her skirt, and she moans but it’s not what he wants and his fingers leave bruises on her thighs.
Crowley makes a face at his swollen lips and the way his mouth glistens. “Seriously?”
Dean shrugs, the thrumming under his skin no better for the quick-and-dirty climax or the fifteen minutes of distraction. He drains his beer and slams the bottle down. “Let’s go.”
Crowley doesn’t ask him to change the music, though he does have an annoying habit of singing along from time to time. AC/DC is apparently his favorite, and he has a disconcertingly good voice, which makes his singing even more annoying than Sam’s.
* * *
Sam is on his brother’s tail fairly quickly. Dean has a day-long head start, but he’s not being particularly careful about covering his tracks.
The third bar is the charm.
“Oh, yeah, that guy,” the bartender says as he puts a beer in front of Sam. “He was here all right. You might wanna speak to Darla. She spent a little time with him, if you catch my drift.”
So Dean was unhurried enough to get laid before he took off after Abaddon. Sam’s not sure why that makes him even more furious. Dean hasn’t shown any interest in women for months. Is it being away from Sam that’s cheering him up and jump-starting his libido? Figures.
The worry that his anger pushed Dean down this dangerous road gnaws at Sam, alternating with bursts of rage. Why couldn’t Dean just apologize? Why couldn’t he just listen? Thirty years of being brothers, and Dean still can’t see Sam as he really is. Dean still sees his little brother, a kid who Dean has to take care of and keep close, and that’s not all Sam is anymore. Was it really too much to want Dean to acknowledge that for once?
“You wanted to know about that Dean guy?”
Darla leans in, looking Sam over appreciatively. She’s pretty, looks like Dean’s type.
“Uh, yeah. You spoke to him?”
“Well, we didn’t do a whole lot of talking.” Darla laughs, and Sam forces a smile.
“I’m sure you didn’t. Was he—did he come in with another guy?”
Darla nods. “The Brit with the snobby attitude?”
“That would be the one.”
“You ask me, that guy was jealous. Does Dean swing both ways?”
Sam splutters into his beer. “What? No. I mean, I don’t know. Why do you ask that?”
Darla shrugs. “Just the way that guy looked at him. And they left together.”
“Did he say where they were going?”
Darla shakes her head. “Nope. Like I said, he wasn’t very talkative. Frankly, I thought for a minute there he was gonna be a real dick, just out for himself, you know?”
“Out for himself?”
“Yeah, you know, he got his and then wham bam thank you ma’am, I’m outta here.”
Sam has always known way more than he should about his brother’s sexual habits. And that doesn’t sound like Dean at all.
“Turns out he just needed a little reminder,” Darla continues, smiling. “Totally worth the wait.”
“Great,” Sam says, trying to cut her off before she tells him even more about Dean’s sexual prowess, like Sam hasn’t already heard it all from Dean himself. “One more thing—about what time was that?”
“Around midnight. Why?”
“Thanks again, you’ve been very helpful.”
“Sure thing,” Darla shrugs and walks away.
The bartender lets him into the back room to review the surveillance feed from the night before. At twenty minutes after midnight, the Impala roars across the parking lot and onto the highway. Crowley is riding shotgun.
In my seat.
The thought rankles. Sam pays his tab and leaves, unwanted images of Darla and his brother following him into the parking lot. Half their lives, people have wondered if Dean wasn’t exactly straight. Sam has wondered himself, more than once. The idea is a dangerous one, leading to things Sam knows he shouldn’t think about, things his imagination shouldn’t conjure. He rolls down the window of the rental car and distracts himself with the cool night breeze as he drives.
He makes it to Morristown before the fatigue catches up with him and he pulls into a motel for the night. The smallest room, a single twin bed shoved against the wall. It hurts more than he expects it to.
That night, Sam has the dream for the first time.
He’s in a cornfield, stalks so high he can’t see over them fencing him in on all sides. He can hear shouting and screaming in the distance, and the stench of sulfur hangs in the air, acrid and bitter. Sam’s hacking his way through the field, swinging a machete back and forth as he tries to force his way through the corn, but every time he cuts it back, more appears in its place, enclosing him more and more tightly. The stalks whip against his face, pound against his back, like they’re animate and out to get him, trying to keep him from getting to his brother.
Dean is up ahead, where the noise is coming from, but he’s too far away to hear Sam calling his name, yelling for him to stop, to wait. Sam’s lungs burn as he gasps for breath, his legs like jelly, shaking so much he can hardly stand. Again and again he falls, corncobs crunching under his knees as he crawls, fingers in the dirt, the stalks falling on his back pushing him down.
“Dean!” He can hear himself screaming, so close now that he can feel the warmth of the fire up ahead, where Dean is. He raises his head and he can see the dark silhouette of his brother inside the farm house, caught in the firelight as he raises his arm, sparks flying off the first blade and the mark glowing red and angry on his forearm.
“Noooooo!”
Sam’s screaming it aloud when he wakes up, drenched in sweat and shaking with an adrenaline rush of panic. It’s only 6 AM, but he gets up and on the road, the need to find his brother suddenly more urgent.
It was just a dream, he tells himself. But it doesn’t feel that way.
* * *
Three days later, Sam almost catches up to Dean and Crowley at a diner off Route 24. It’s just past dusk when Sam pulls into the parking lot. There are six cars outside, but the diner itself is dark. Only the “Big L” sign, blinking on and off like a giant bug zapper, illuminates the building. Sam pats the knife at his hip, the gun at his back. He wishes it were his brother there, the way it should be.
There’s no sound other than the hum of the sign, but Sam still opens the door quickly, gun in hand, senses on high alert. In the dim light, he can make out bodies on the floor. Three of them, unmoving. Another is slumped over the counter, still seated on her stool like she decided to take a nap in the middle of a meal. Sam checks each of them, two fingers to the pulse point. Dead, every one.
He finds the master switch and flips it, bright light abruptly flooding the little diner. Sam spins, finger twitching on the trigger of his gun, ready. Nothing happens.
There’s another body near the door to the kitchen, a hand outstretched. The black-and-white tile floor is smeared with red; there’s blood on the counter, on the backs of the dingy beige diner seats.
Sam’s sure these were demons; the smell of sulfur is still in the air. Whether the people unfortunate enough to be meatsuits were alive or dead before they were killed this time is anyone’s guess.
The clatter of something metallic in the kitchen startles Sam out of his thoughts. He kicks the door open quickly, searching for the source.
It doesn’t take long to find.
There’s a man on the floor, an overturned frying pan beside him. He’s covered in blood, but his eyes are open, and fuck, Sam’s seen that look before.
“Hey, hey, it’s okay, I’m gonna get you help,” he says, kneeling down beside the man. There’s a lot of blood on the floor. Too much.
“He—he was a madman,” the man splutters. Sam can hear the rattle in his chest that says he has a punctured lung.
Sam thinks about telling him not to waste his strength, not to talk, but it’s clear it won’t make any difference.
“I could see the whole thing—from inside. But I couldn’t speak, couldn’t beg for him not to kill me too.”
Sam swallows hard. “You were possessed. How long?”
The man’s eyes are rolling up. “Don’t know. Five—six weeks. Long time.”
He coughs, blood spraying everywhere.
“Kept hoping,” the man says, and his voice is thinning, barely projecting.
“Take it easy,” Sam says, and puts a hand on the man’s shoulder, tries to ease the fear of it if not the pain.
The man coughs again, then rallies.
“They drove a big black car. Impala. Two—two of them,” he gasps, and then falls silent. Sam stays until his chest stops rising and falling.
“Fuck,” he says aloud as he gets to his feet. “What the fuck are you doing, Dean?”
The question gnaws at Sam as he drives. He can track the Impala more easily than anything else in the universe, and right now, it’s like the car wants him to find them. She’s digging her tires in, hugging the road and then veering wide so Sam can’t miss the familiar treads in the mud. It’s not like Dean to drive her so erratically.
A lot of things aren’t like Dean right now.
Five hours and one quickly corrected wrong turn later, Sam finds Dean’s baby in the parking lot of a dive bar a few miles off the highway. Her tires are muddy and her usually sleek black coat is dulled with a thin coat of road dust.
“Sorry, baby,” Sam says as he walks past her, running a finger gently through the dust to leave a thin streak of shiny black. “Dean doesn’t mean it.”
Sam can fix this. He’s sure of it.
It’s midnight and the bar is crowded, a bunch of guys and a few women shooting pool. Dean is among them.
Sam breathes a sigh of relief just seeing his brother in one piece.
Dean leans over the table and sweeps the balls into place with his elbows, the way he has since he was fourteen and trying to pass as much older, hustling pool to keep Sam in Lucky Charms and SpaghettiOs. Sam remembers following him sometimes to whatever seedy bar was in walking distance, making himself invisible in the corner while he watched Dean swagger like he wasn’t just a kid himself. Guys would scoff and wager against the skinny kid with the too-pretty face, laughing as Dean let his first few shots go wide. He’d get better slowly, never letting anyone catch on until it was too late. Sometimes Sam swore that Dean distracted them on purpose, licking his too-full lips and letting his cheeks pink when the guys looked too long, like he was some blushing virgin (which Sam knew wasn’t true; playing pool wasn’t the only activity he’d spied on his brother doing). It wasn’t until Dean had them where he wanted them that he would lean over the table, slow and easy like he knew half of them were eyeballing his ass, and gather the balls into a perfect triangle.
Sometimes he came close to getting beat up over it, but Sam had an idea that the moment was worth it—the expressions on their faces when they knew he’d beaten them.
Dean has that same swagger now, but he can pull it off better. The line of his jaw is more severe, darkened by stubble, but his eyes are just as pretty, and the almost-beard just makes his mouth more obvious. The women and some of the men are watching him appreciatively, one of them adding a low whistle. He breaks and cleans up easily, and his opponents grumble but walk away. Apparently there’s nothing on the line this time but their pride. So it’s not money Dean’s after. Sam scans the women gathered around the table, wondering whose gaze Dean will return.
A tall young man with hair almost down to his shoulders pushes through the girls, a glass of whisky in his hand. He holds it out to Dean, and Sam waits for Dean to rebuff him with a snarky comment that Sam will be able to decipher from the other side of the room.
Dean pauses, cue still in hand. His eyes fall on the drink, then flicker up to the man’s face, and Sam’s surprised to see Dean’s lip curl in a smirk. He doesn’t say anything, but he lifts the cue stick to put it back on the rack, running one hand up its length slowly and deliberately while he runs his eyes up and down the man in front of him. There’s no mistaking the look, or the gesture.
Part Two
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2014-08-18 06:21 pm (UTC)Cause they're both right - Dean did it to save Sam's life, ignoring he was being played by the angel and Sam feels betrayed by Dean- and both wrong, cause Dean needs to say he's sorry and Sam needs to forgive. They just don't know how to be apart from each other and horrible things happen when they're not side by side.
Sam caressing Baby broke my heart; he might not say it out loud, but he loves that car (their true home) just as much as Dean.
Lovely, lovely start, love the way you write the boys.
no subject
Date: 2014-08-18 06:43 pm (UTC)Also, I totally agree with you about Sam's feelings for the Impala. After all, it's been his home too.
no subject
Date: 2022-02-18 11:39 am (UTC)Am really enjoying looking back at this season here. There was so much going on post-Gadreel and with the mark and it’s great to take a deep dive back into that. Especially looking back as you wrote this while events were still unfolding 😄
Am really feeling the rift between the boys and how they are struggling to understand each other. Oh the angst!!😄👍🏻
no subject
Date: 2022-02-21 04:22 am (UTC)