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Dean stomped back to their motel room alone. This hunt was a bust and Sam had disappeared as soon as they’d realized that it hadn’t been a pair of witchcraft-related murders, but a suicide pact between two people with a history of mental health issues longer than even Sam’s arm. It had been a depressing and frustrating day, and Sam bailing on him made everything worse.
Trudging along the dark brown corridor to their room, Dean turned the Sam issue over in his head once again. His brother was disappearing a lot these days and between that and the way he was able to crush Alastair like a Coke can and wouldn’t tell anyone how, it sucked. It made Dean angry but also broke his heart every time. They’d been closer than ever before he’d gone downstairs in every way Dean knew, and now it felt like Sam was out of reach, drifting a little further away every day. He was scared too: scared of the angels, and scared for Sam by their warnings which told him that whatever Sam was doing for this power, it was nothing good.
Mostly, he was just fucking tired. Tired of shitty motel rooms. Tired of being in pain all the time while sleep gave him no rest at all. Tired of being ordered around by dickbag angels while fighting with Sam about allowing Ruby to yank his chain.
He was tired of everything. Once he got to his room – shitty, with a bed like uneven bricks that smelled faintly of old lady perfume – he was going to drink a fifth of whiskey and hopefully pass out. At least being drunk quietened his head for a while.
Being so tired and distracted wasn’t healthy, especially in their line of work. He wasn’t on his game and it was too easy to get the jump on him. As soon as he opened the motel room door, someone threw a bag over his head, another pair of impossibly strong hands wrestled him into cuffs and they manhandled him along, one on either side.
As if this day couldn’t get any shittier, he thought to himself. He was too tired, too fucking done with it all to even feel afraid. He just felt resigned. Of course he was being kidnapped. Why wouldn’t he be? Just the cherry on the shit sundae of his life right now.
Even with his head covered, he could tell when he was brought outside – something in the feel of the air on his hands – before he was shoved into what felt like the back of a van; the stench of the sulfur hit him through the cloth. Of course it was demons. Just what he needed. The doors slammed behind him and they drove off. The demons didn’t drive carefully; Dean jolted around the almost empty van, hitting his head painfully off the side a few times when he couldn’t brace himself enough with his bound hands.
They didn’t drive for very long. By Dean’s estimation, they were less than a mile away from where they’d started. It figured that demons had been right under their noses this whole time and he hadn’t noticed a damn thing. That was just how things seemed to be for Dean right now. They dragged him out of the van – roughly, allowing his head to bang painfully on the roof as he stepped out – and dragged him along, their grip on his upper arms painfully tight. Dean felt the air still as they went inside, where they tied him to what felt like a pillar, then finally took the bag from his head.
Dean took a deep breath of air that reeked of rotten egg as he blinked from the sudden light. Once he got his vision back he assessed his surroundings. It looked like an abandoned house – broken furniture, peeling wallpaper, and clearly being used as a base by the demons judging by the new-looking table with a coffee cup, a bloodstained silver bowl, and a dagger. Three people – scratch that, three demons – stood in front of him, two possessing some bland thirtysomething men who looked incongruously like accountants and the other a woman of around twenty in a tiny black cocktail dress.
The whole situation was so weird, with the three of them looking so out of place, that Dean couldn't stop himself from laughing.
“What’s so funny, sweetheart?” the woman, her voice singsong and mocking, asked. “Doesn’t look to me like you have a lot to laugh about.”
“You three.” Dean spat the words out as defiantly as he could. He might be at the end of his rope, but that didn’t mean he had to let these hell dicks know. “This some sort of Stepford Demon thing?” He knew that was weak, but it was all he had. It was enough to keep up appearances at least.
“Oh, Dean.” The same singsong tone as she stepped forward. She was the leader of this little crew, then. “You’re in a whole world of trouble now. And so is Sam.”
He scoffed. “Oh yeah? Well, I don’t see him around.”
She smiled wider, predatory and cruel. “But you will. You’ll be seeing him real soon. We left a nice, clear trail for him. He should be arriving any minute now.” She stepped forward and took his chin in her hand, long nails digging uncomfortably into the soft delicate skin of his face and neck, then leaned in close to whisper into his ear. “This is a trap for Sam and you’re the nice, juicy bait.”
Dean felt fear for the first time since they’d snagged him, a cold trickle down his spine that pooled in his gut. No matter what happened, or how bad things might be between them, he still cared about what happened to Sam more than he cared about himself.
The demon turned to her accomplices. “Into position, boys.” The two satanic accountants positioned themselves on either side of the door and she turned back to Dean, her lips brushing against his ear, the smell of sulfur rancid on her breath. “While we wait, the two of us are going to have some fun together.”
Dean shuddered and tried to pull his face from her grip; no matter how hot the meat suit, he knew exactly what was inside the packaging and what had happened to create it. Her hand was clamped on, it felt like, and he couldn't get away. She laughed, still up close and reeking of hellfire.
“Don’t play coy, baby. I know you have plenty of experience.” Wilt that, she twisted his face to hers and kissed him, forcing her tongue into his mouth. She tasted of ash and decay and Dean gagged, reflexively trying to pull his tongue back into his throat to get away.
She pulled away and he breathed deeply, the previously gross air like a fresh meadow compared to the mouthful he’d just had. His relief didn’t last long, however.
From nowhere, the demon had produced a knife, maybe five inches long, sharp and gleaming. Quickly and efficiently, she used it to hack off Dean’s shirt leaving him exposed and shivering in the chilly room.
She traced his tattoo with a fingernail, its edge rasping as it dragged over his skin. “Maybe I’ll slice this off and get real intimate with this body, Dean. It’s not often I get to play with one this pretty.”
“Screw you.” Not his wittiest rejoinder, but it was at least defiant.
“Mmm, maybe you will. Later, after we’ve got rid of your little brother for good.” The fingernail lifted from his chest only to be replaced by the cold tip of the knife. “But that’s something to look forward to.”
She pushed the knife into his chest, just into the muscle, slicing diagonally down his chest parallel to the collar bone. His own blood felt familiar as it spilled, almost pleasantly warm on his skin at first until it cooled and became sticky and gross. Her breathing was heavy, her eyes gleaming, and she bit her lip. Even if Dean hadn’t had his own personal insight into how demons thought, it would have been obvious that she was getting off on this.
Fucking demons.
She sliced a V-shape into his chest, deep and gaping. Dean barely flinched. This kind of pain had been a daily occurrence up until recently. It was nothing. He was more worried about Sam and the trap he was walking into. Once she’d finished, she started cutting lower on his chest, another V in line with the first. Dean still didn’t react, and her breathing quietened.
She was pissed that Dean wasn’t giving her what she wanted he figured. He felt a flicker of satisfaction at that; even tied up and helpless, he could still screw up her plans.
She turned the knife to slice upwards again, but before she could begin the door swung open and she spun around.
Sam.
There was no time to shout out a warning – the two demons jumped at him immediately. To Dean’s shock, however, they didn’t reach Sam. With a careless gesture of Sam’s right hand, they both flew across the room, landing in sprawled heaps at the woman’s feet. Dean watched on in horror as Sam raised his hand and twisted it in a fist. He radiated power even to Dean, who had no special angel powers. The three demons screamed in agony, then slumped to the ground, lifeless and quiet.
So this was what it had been like when Sam had ended Alastair. No wonder Cas had been so freaked out.
Sam rushed over to him and started cutting the ropes. “You okay?” Sam asked, checking him over as he worked.
Dean nodded, not trusting his own voice. Right now, he didn’t feel relieved that the demons didn’t manage to trap Sam, or glad that he’d been rescued. He didn’t even feel angry at Sam for his secrets, for whatever he was doing to get those freaky powers.
He just felt sad, and so, so tired.
Once he got the ropes off, Sam wrapped Dean in his jacket and put an arm around him, trying to help him to the car. Dean didn’t need the help, but he didn’t push him away for once.
He just didn’t have the will. It was as if, after waking up in that hospital room, something in him had just given up. These days, he just let things happen to and around him. If Sam wanted to half-carry him out of some shithole, Dean wasn’t going to resist.
The drive back was quiet, Sam focusing on getting back to the motel as quickly as possible, Dean on pressing a wad of rags to his chest to stanch the bleeding. The silence suited him; he had no idea what to say to Sam. He knew he should ask him how he was doing it, what was making him so powerful when weeks ago he had nothing. Dean didn’t want to go through it all again, however: the evasion, the frustration, the anger. He was just fucking done with it all.
He looked out the window of the bleak town – the one canning factory had closed three years ago and it showed – and tried not to think about anything.
—
When they arrived at the motel, Sam led him carefully into their single-star room and laid him down on the side of the bed, propping him up much more carefully than he usually would, before setting their first aid kit on the nightstand. Dean watched as Sam took out their biggest, talon-curved needle and sterilized it with their cheapest bourbon.
He kept waiting for the pain to kick in – he’d assumed that, despite being so emotionally blunted, an adrenaline rush had blocked it – but he still felt numb to it. He had a weird disconnect from his body these days as if it was something separate from his soul. They had been separated for four months; maybe that was part of it. He'd told them that making him… do that to Alastair would change him. Maybe this was how. Maybe both parts of him had remembered that he shouldn't be walking around: his soul belonged in Hell and his body should be rotten slop in the soil.
Sam started to stitch up Dean’s chest, the huge needle piercing under the chasm of blood on his chest that was the first stab wound. Dean’s body prickled with pain with every stitch, the odd kind that made his spine tingle and want to cringe away, but his brain didn't really register. It felt like Sam was stitching up someone else’s body and someone else was feeling the hurt. It was all fuzzy, like something that was happening on the other side of a cloudy pane of glass. When Sam patted Dean’s shoulder between suturing cuts, that felt as if it was happening to someone else too.
He watched as Sam’s hands worked, nimble and practiced, strong but careful, and thought about what they’d done less than an hour before. Something dark, something terrifying. Something Dean didn’t even begin to understand. That was weird too. This was Dean’s little brother, who he’d known inside out for as long as he could remember, who’d come to Dean when he wanted to know anything up until he was the age of fourteen. Who he’d practically been inseparable from for years before he went downstairs.
And now, there was this huge secret, dark and festering and fucking evil, between them. Dean had no idea what to do about it, and watching him now, it was hard to believe anything had actually changed. It was still Sam’s face, with the same crease of concentration between his eyes, the same focused set to his jaw.
Dean wondered if he could put their shit to one side – ignore the secrecy and the lies, the sneaking off and his fear – and just let Sam be, well, Sam. Just for one night. Just for himself.
God, he wanted to. Felt like the only thing he did want was to go back to how they’d been before, truth be told. Before their dad had made any demon deals, when it had just been the two of them on the road. When they killed evil sons of bitches, then Dean would try to hook up, Sam would laugh at him when he crashed and burned, and sometimes falling into bed together briefly on the nights when it had been too long for them both.
It had all seemed so simple back then. Hunt the monster, have some fun, and have each other’s backs in every way. That’s how things had been and Dean had loved it. Now, everything was a fucking mess, Sam was a fucking mystery to him, and ‘fun’ was something he could barely remember.
He hissed with pain that derailed his train of thought, one clumsy jab of the needle getting through his weird funk, and Sam murmured “Sorry, sorry. Almost done,” as he pulled the thread through.
The whole room reeked of his blood, the charnel house tang in the air hardly something that should be comforting. Their lives were weird, however, and there was something familiar about this that hadn’t been for a long time. Dean couldn't remember the last time he’d had Sam’s attention fully focused on him like this, where it was just the two of them in a motel room and nobody was running off to do mysterious shit behind the other’s back.
The temptation to pretend things were just like old times was strong. Sure, he could question Sam about how he’d ganked the demons, but what would that get him? Just more frustration and sadness, that was all. The alternative was to go along with it. He’d let Sam look after him now and deal with the shit tomorrow.
Sam pulled the last stitch through and tied off the thread before picking up the shitty whiskey again and pouring it over Dean’s chest. It set the wounds alight, the first pain that properly penetrated the barrier between his body and himself since this whole thing started, and he gritted his teeth and clenched his eyes shut until the heat died down to embers. The smell of the cloying cheap booze mixed with his blood made him gag and for once Dean was glad he hadn’t eaten.
When he opened his eyes, Sam was kneeling by his feet, carefully unlacing Dean’s boots. He looked up and caught Dean’s eye.
“Don’t want you to pull your stitches doing this yourself.”
Dean swallowed down the lump in his throat at that, but still only trusted himself to nod. Sam was still here, thoughtful and careful, and still his little brother. Dean should make the most of it while he still could.
He lay still while Sam unlaced his boots and removed them, unusually carefully so as not to jar his just-stitched chest, placing them at the end of the bed once he’d finished. Then, Sam got to his feet and moved to wrap an arm around his shoulders.
“Let’s get you out of those jeans and cleaned up.”
Once they were in the bathroom, Sam undid Dean’s fly as Dean leaned against the wall. He remembered other times he’d been leaning against the wall and Sam had pulled his jeans down – in alleyways, motel rooms, the men’s room of a sleazy bar – then kissed him, hot and frantic. They’d been two fucked-up kids then, looking back on it, with no one else around to keep their boundaries straight and pretending it was no big deal to blow your brother. It had still been less fucked up than whatever was going on between them now, where he had a brain full of literal Hell and Sam was a closed book to him.
Sam peeled off Dean’s blood-stiffened clothes piece by piece: jeans, then underwear, then socks. Dean stayed where he was against the wall, his flaccid cock against his thigh and feeling more vulnerable than he’d been when the demons had him. He kept quiet as Sam soaked a washcloth in hot water and then got to work on scrubbing off the worst of the flaking blood and sticky bourbon from his torso, taking care not to pull on his stitches.
He wondered how long it would be before whatever Sam was doing to himself destroyed that caring, thoughtful side of his brother forever. Considering how powerful Sam seemed to have gotten, Dean was terrified that it might not be much longer.
Sam moved down to his groin, gently working out the dried clumps of blood from his pubic hair, and cleaning the smears from his cock. Dean felt himself involuntarily harden from the touch despite his tiredness and how fucking done he was. He missed everything from before, whether it was the normal stuff like nights in bars doing their thing, or the fucked up stuff they’d never talked about and shouldn't have even thought about. Apparently, his body wanted to make that clear. Dean closed his eyes and let it happen, trying to just enjoy being looked after for once. It was one quiet moment in a sea of crap and he was too tired to fight it.
The washcloth was old and worn, scratchy against his dick and balls even though Sam was trying to be careful, but it took away the gross feel of the dried blood on his skin, and it was warm from Sam’s hands. Dean sighed and let his head fall back against the chipped plaster and focused on the good stuff. He was clean and Sam still gave enough of a shit about him to do all this for him. He’d take it.
He heard a wet thump – Sam throwing the bloodstained washcloth aside most likely – then the rougher feel of a dry towel being patted over his skin. He was fully hard by now and flinched at the touch of the fabric against the too-sensitive head of his cock.
Of all the things to get horny about, your brother cleaning up the aftermath of your torture was probably not it, Dean knew. The fact that this was the best thing he’d had in months said nothing good about his life. He knew that too.
Their lives had always been shit. It had only been because they had each other that it had been okay. This last while Sam had been pulling away from him and that had been why things had been so bad. Right now, Sam was with him, and Dean would keep him as close as he could.
“Think that’s the best I can do for now.”
Dean opened his eyes and met Sam’s gaze. He took a gentle hold of Sam’s wrist and said, “Let’s go to bed.”
He hoped Sam knew what he meant. He didn’t want to have to ask for it.
Sam nodded and let the towel drop to the floor before carefully leading Dean into the bedroom and helping him into bed, propping him up until he was comfortable. Then Sam stripped off his own clothes, stained with Dean’s blood, switched off the lights, and slipped into bed beside him.
“Do you wanna…” Sam began, but Dean cut him off. Putting it into words would be too much, too real.
“Yeah, Sammy.”
“Okay. Don’t move.”
Dean stared up at the ceiling as Sam scrabbled around for whatever. He could have just switched the lamp back on, but Dean knew that neither of them ever would. They always did this in the dark, from getting into bed until the very end. It was part of the rules that meant that didn’t count, wasn’t real.
Sam finally found what he was looking for. Dean lay motionless as he listened to the wet sound of Sam warming up the lube, and then Sam climbed on top of him, lining their hips together. Unexpectedly, he felt Sam’s lips against his, clumsy as they tried to find his mouth in the dim light. Dean opened his mouth and kissed him back, tasting coffee and something else he couldn't place, sour and unpleasant, before Sam took both their dicks in his lube-wet hand.
Dean lay still as Sam thrust their cocks together, his hand giving just the right amount of pressure as he moved. Dean tried to focus on all the little details, to store them away for some time to come when he lost Sam forever: the feel of long hair against his cheek, the harsh sound of Sam’s breathing, the care Sam took not to irritate the sutured chest. Dean tried to take it all in and put it in a little lockbox to tuck away safe in his mind, until finally and inevitably his orgasm hit, Sam following just behind. Sam rolled off Dean before he could collapse on top of him, lying beside him with their heavy breathing the only sound in the room.
They never spoke after doing this and this time was no exception. They lay wordlessly side by side, careful not to look at each other as their breath slowed and steadied. Eventually, Sam stirred and moved to leave.
Dean unexpectedly panicked at that. Leaving was normal after this. They’d never fallen asleep together afterward; that was too much, and too far away from the casual thing this had always been.
Right now, Dean didn’t care about that. He wanted Sam near.
Without taking time to overthink it, he reached out and took hold of Sam’s wrist again. “Don’t go.”
Sam’s face was obscured by shadow, but Dean didn't need to see his expression. He could read Sam’s body language from the set of his shoulders, or the tilt of his head. Sam seemed surprised. Dean couldn’t exactly blame him.
“Yeah, okay.” Sam settled back into bed. Dean felt himself relax a little.
Dean stayed on his back while Sam contorted himself around him in the limited space. He ended up letting one arm sprawl over Dean’s stomach, heavy and comforting. Dean was under no illusions. Things were still bad between them, had been since Dean came back from downstairs, and this didn’t fix a damn thing. For this one night, however, Dean was going to put all that aside. Sam was still here for now and that would have to be enough.