Cursed
bloodwritesDean's been driving for an hour or more. Close to an hour and a half, he reckons.
And it matters, because he's been driving too long. They've traveled too far to go back. Dean knows this road, knew he'd be driving all night before they got to the closest town, the closest place with people.
Dean pulls the Impala over to the side of the road.
"I'm sick," he says, when Sam looks over with a question in his eyes. "Sweaty. Shaky."
He knows the feeling, the one that spreads over Sam's face: horror and disbelief.
"I'm dying, Sam," Dean says. "I'm dead already.
They just wrapped up a job. Ganked the witch throwing curses around like confetti, and he was a sick fuck, tooâcursing the people he didn't like with an agonizing deathâand the only cure? Sex. Except none of his victims knew that, the boys only got it out of him at the end, when it was too late for all of them.
It's too late for Dean, too. Once all the victims started showing symptomsâfever, the shakesâthey were all dead within an hour, and they all died screaming, doctorsâif they even made it to a doctor before it was overâhelpless to save them.
If it was an option, Dean wouldn't be opposed to some anonymous sex to save his own assâhell, he'd even pay for it under the circumstancesâ
But they're an hour from civilization in any direction.
Dean's dead.
Sam stares at Dean in horror. Dean can see the cogs turning in his head, working out all the possibilities, every single option.
"You're wasting your time," Dean says. "There's nothing. I can't be saved."
Sam blinks. His eyes are shining. "No," he says. "There's always a wayâ"
"Not this time. It doesn't matter, Sammy. I was scheduled to kick it in a few months anyway."
"No," Sam repeats. "No, Dean. We still had timeâ"
"My clock just ran out a little early is all." Dean closes his eyes and leans his head back, and he strokes his hands over the steering wheel.
If he didn't have Sam in the car with him, Dean would drive off a cliff or something. It would be quick, and over.
"A bullet," Dean says. "I'm gonna eat a bullet. I saw how much pain they were in."
"No," Sam says again, and this time, the horror and desperation are gone from his voice, and what's left is only conviction.
Sam gets out of the car, and he opens the trunk, and Dean hears him rattle around in there for a while before he appears at the drivers door.
"Move over," Sam says, opening Dean's door.
Dean does. "Whatâ" he says, hope flaring in him, that Sam has an answer, even though it's hopeless.
Sam grabs Dean's hand, and he drops a handful of pills into it, then screws the cap off a bottle of water and shoves that at Dean, too.
"Acetaminophen," he says. "For the fever. Should give you a few more minutes. And oxy for the pain. You're gonna need it."
"I'm not drawing it out," Dean says. "A bullet'll fix everything."
"I'm not letting you die on the side of the road. And I'm not letting you shoot yourself. Take the damn pills, Dean."
Sam turns the keys and the engine roars to life, and Sam pulls out onto the road.
Sam thinks he can get them to town, find someone to fix this. Its pointless, hopeless, but Dean swallows the pills, washes them down, because who is he to take the last ounce of hope from his baby brother?
If he's hoping to save Dean's ass, Sam should put his foot down, but he's cruising, and his eyes scan the road, like he's looking for something.
Another human being? Someone he can pay, or threaten, to take the curse off his brother?
But then he pulls off the road onto a gravel track, and god knows where they're goingâa house, maybe?
There are no lights. No house, no people, just a rutted dirt road that takes them down to an overgrown river, or stream, or drain, with an ancient bridge running over it.
Sam parks the car beneath the bridge, shuts off the engine, and pops the door open, shooting out of the car like the damn thing is on fire.
He opens the trunk, slams it shut, then he pulls open the passenger door and pulls Dean out of the car.
"I know you're gonna fight me," he says, as he claps a pair of handcuffs around Dean's wrists. "But I'm begging you, Dean. Don't. Just let me do what I gotta do, okay?"
What else is Dean supposed to do? He jerks away, but too slow. He could run, but he's uncoordinated and fatigued, and a lot of it is the curse, but Sam gave him the good pills, and Dean's head is already swimming, confused, and Dean took them because he knew he'd be dead anyway soon, he didn't know Sam was going to lock him upâand for what? To stop him shooting himself?
Then Sam reaches for Dean's belt, and he gets Dean's jeans undone, and something of an idea teases at the edge of Dean's consciousness.
But no. It's too unthinkable. There's no way, no way in hellâ
Sam turns Dean and shoves him up against the car, pins him with his hips as he jerks at his own belt and Dean hears the metallic sound of a zipper quickly pulled.
Dean shouts, and he cries out, and he begs Sam to stop.
"I'm so sorry," Sam says. "But I gotta do this, Dean. I'm not letting you die when there's somethingâeven if it's awfulâI can do to save you."
Dean struggles, fights, but he's high on painkillers and all he does is scratch up the roof of his car. "No, Sammy. Please, Sammy. You don't want to do this."
"You know I don't."
Dean chokes, because he can feel the warmth of Sam's bare skinâhis bare cockâagainst his ass.
"But I can knock you out, if you prefer," Sam says.
"Don't do it, Sam," Dean begs. If he's out, he can't stop this, and he needs to stop it. "Let me die. I'd rather die than be saved, like this."
Sam slides his hand up, grabs hold of the back of Dean's head. "I'm sorry, Dean," Sam says. "I'm so fucking sorry, but I can't let you die."
And he slams Dean's forehead onto the roof of the car.
Dean's head throbs and there are flames licking at his skin and he hears his own voice, rising in a moan.
He's full, god, so full, and he can smell salt and sweat and moisture in the air, leaf mold and decomp, and the smell of blood, and rubber, and his own arousal.
He's hard, there are places inside him suffering, he's in hell, and he doesn't remember dying.
It's not his brother inside him. It's some demon, or the devil himself, grunting as he pushes deeper into Dean's body, over and over again.
Dean clings to hell, because it's the only thing he can accept. He'd rather be dead, raped by a demon in hell than live and be saved by his brotherâ
âlike this.
"I'm so sorry," the devil says, and he's using Sam's voice. His fingers press bruises into Dean's hips. "I'm so sorry, Dean."
Dean chokes on his spit, lets out a desperate sob. "Stop," he says. "Let me go to hell, Sam. I'd rather go to hell."
"The worst is over," Sam says, and he keeps on going. Harder, more bruises. More fire beneath Dean's skin.
He could fight. He could try. He'll fail, because his legs are weak and his hands are cuffed and his head is spinning and he can't see straight.
But he can think, and fuck Sam, Sam's doing this to him, and he can never take it back.
"You wanted this," Dean accuses.
"I never wanted to hurt you."
"Not that," Dean says. "You wanted to fuck me. All you needed was the chance to do it, a reason to do it, an excuse."
Sam falters.
"You wanted to fuck me, Sam," Dean spits, and his body tenses in disgust. "You've always wanted to fuck me, You're sick, this is sick."
"I know," Sam says. "But I can't stop. I won't let you go. I won't let you die."
"I'm dead anyway," Dean says, gasping, panting. "I'm already dead. You're fucking a corpse, Sam. I'm damned. I'm going to hell, there's no stopping it. And you just made sure that you're gonna join me in the fire, Sammy. I hate you. I fucking hate you for doing this to me, Sam, and I'm gonna hate you till my year is up."
Sam shakes, and he sobs, but he keeps fucking Dean like his life depends on it. Harder, faster, grunting and sweating and all Dean can do is brace.
Brace, and pray he doesn't come. His cock is hard and pressed against the cold steel of the car, and normally, that wouldn't do shit, but his brother's big cock is in his ass, dragging over his prostate over and over and over again.
Sam cries out, finally, stills, finally, and his voice is wrecked, mournful and terrified, broken and desperate.
And then it's over. Sam stumbles back and leaves Dean to slide into the mud, unable to save himself with his hands cuffed.
Sam tries to pick Dean up, Dean pulls away. He'd rather drown in the muck.
Sam uncuffs him. Slowly, Dean gets to his feet, but he's unsteady, still reeling from the drugs and the blow to his head.
And the shock of it all.
He fastens his jeans. And only then does he allow himself to even look at his brother.
"Dean," Sam says, pleading with open palms, but Dean doesn't let Sam get any further. He pulls back, and he hits Sam as hard as he can.
Sam reels back, clutching his jaw, but he stays upright.
Dean doesn't. He falls into the mud again, and that's when he realizes it's raining, and he's sitting in a rivulet flowing down from the bridge, and it's swelling, rushing toward the river.
He could follow it. Throw himself in. Drown himself and wake up in hell and never have to lay eyes on his brother again.
"You're alive," Sam says, towering above Dean, looking down. "I saved your life. It was worth it."
"No," Dean says. "It wasn't."
Sam will never forget this. It wasn't worth the handful of months Dean has left and it wasn't worth killing their relationship because Dean's never going to be able to look Sam in the eye again and Sam will never be able to look at himself in the mirror again.
And it serves him fucking right. Sam's going to have a hell of a lot more years to suffer the consequences of what he's done tonight than Dean will.
Sam shoves Dean in the passenger seat and drives. It's more than an hour to the next town, to a motel and a warm bed and a hot shower. They travel in silence.
"I hate you," Dean hisses when the torment builds up enough it overflows, because if he doesn't speak, he'll scream. "I fucking hate you."
Dean follows his brother into the motel room. After dumping their bags, Sam reaches out.
"Let me help you," he says, tugging at Dean's jacket.
"Don't touch me," Dean growls. He pulls away violently, and with a kind of revulsion he's never felt before, not even when hunting the most disgusting of monsters, the kind that eat corpses and stink of it. "Don't you ever fucking touch me again."
Dean grabs his bag by one handle, and he drags the entire thing behind him into the bathroom. He slams the door hard enough that the whole room shakes around him.
He locks the door.
He turns the shower on. All the way up, as hot as it will go. He strips off his clothing, soaked through and filthy, and he stuffs it all, every single garment, into the tiny trash can in the corner, until it's overflowing.
He gasps when he climbs under the spray of water. It's scalding, but he doesn't care, wants to boil off his skin, because as hard as he scrubs, he's never going to get clean.
Dean's head spins, and, finally, he turns the temperature down, because if he passes out, Sam will break the door to come in, and the last thing Dean wants now is to be exposed, naked, in front of his brother.
There's something about him, about Dean, that made Sam think what he did was okay, and all Dean wants to do now is hide it, cover himself, make whatever it is go away.
Sam watches Dean when he emerges in a cloud of steam with mournful, concerned eyes, but Dean ignores it.
He climbs into the bed nearest the door, bundled in threadbare sweats and a hoodie, and he shivers and lies awake while Sam showers and goes to bed.
Dean lies awake until he finally hears Sam's breathing ease into deep sleep, then he slips out of bed, takes his keys and his bag, and leaves the room on silent feet.
It's pouring with rain. Dean's sweats got wet when he dashed to the car, but he turns the heat all the way up, and he drives.
He drives on through the night, without sleep, coming down off the pain pills Sam gave him, head throbbing from when it connected with the roof of the car, and then he sees it.
On the side of the highway, the same dirt road Sam took, the same road that leads to the river, to the bridge, where Sam fucked himâraped himâ
It's impossible. Dean drove in the opposite direction, he made sure he was headed as far away from that place as he could possibly get.
He never wants to go back there, and he never wants to see that town again, the town where he was cursed, where they killed the monster who did this to him.
Sam did this to him.
The witch, the witch he killed, all they did was sentence Dean to death, a death that was coming anyway.
Sam's the real monster.
Dean shut off the engine when he first spotted the road and coasted to a stop. Through the darkness, he takes a closer look. Past the brush on the side of the road, he can see the contours of the land in the moonlight. There's no river. There's no bridge.
It's not the same place. He is heading in the right direction.
Away.
He starts the engine again. And he drives. He drives until he can't keep his eyes open any longer, until he damn near drives off the road.
He pulls over, and he falls asleep, stretched out on the front seat with his arm for a pillow.
Dean wakes to the car shaking around him and the roar of an 18-wheeler thundering past on the highway.
Dawn lightens the sky. A kind of reflex has him pulling himself up to glance into the back, but all that's there is his bag and the cooler. He left Sam behind him in the motel.
Dean drives. He keeps going, away from Sam, away from what happened to himâbut he can't get away. He can feel it, still, the ache inside him, and it's not pain, not reallyâSam made sure of that, with the pills, by knocking him unconsciousâbut it's there, like Dean can still feel his brother inside him.
No amount of distance will make it go away, will wipe his body's own betrayal from Dean's mind, or his brother's betrayal away.
Dean drives, stopping only for gas and food and sleep, and when his phone starts to ring he ignores it, and when it keeps ringing he turns the damn thing off and throws it into the back seat.
The days and nights blend into each other, until Dean has no idea how long he's been running, until the physical ache inside him has faded.
The ache in his heart, however. That won't go away.
Dean does the only thing he knows how to do to ease that kind of pain, and he stops at the first bar he sees.
It's just the right kind of dive. Indeterminate rock music filters out into the night. Motorcycles are lined up outside.
Dean has no idea where he is, but it doesn't matter. "Whiskey," he says to the bartender when he slides onto a stool. "Keep 'em coming."
Dean ignores the sounds around him. All he hears is the music, all he sees is the level of whiskey in the bottle slowly inching downward.
"Hey."
Dean starts, and looks up at the girl who spoke. She's pretty. Blonde. Wearing a top that's too tight and a skirt that's too short and a smile that invites him to take her back to his motel room and lose himself in an entirely different way.
"Hey," he replies.
"You were looking kinda lonely over here," she says.
"I'm not," Dean lies. He grabs the bottle he paid for with his scammed credit card and had the bartender leave. "I got my best buddy right here."
The girl smirks. "There's gotta be something Jack can't do for you?"
She's forward. Fast. Dean usually likes that, but right now it scares him. "Too soon," he mutters and he slips off the stool and grabs the bottle by the neck and he heads for the door, leaving the girl pouting at the bar.
Dean drives.
He drives all the way to the ocean.
He follows the coast until he can barely keep his eyes open, then stops in a small beach side village and checks into a motel.
As the manager reaches for a key, Dean's eyes stray to a newspaper on the counter.
SHARK ATTACK
"It wasn't a shark," the manager says as he slides the key across the counter. "It was weird."
"Weird is ourâmyâthing," Dean says, taking up the key and the newspaper. "Can I take this?"
"Knock yourself out," the manager says. "Check out is at ten."
Dean could do with a hunt. A distraction. He needs something to hit, something to kill.
He needs something that could kill him.
Dean heads down to the beach early the next morning. There's a man standing at the water's edge where the waves rush up to engulf his ankles and then flow back out again. He's tall, broad-shouldered, with masses of sun-bleached hair falling in untidy waves onto his shoulders. He's looking out past the breakers.
Dean comes up behind him, stopping short of the high water line. "You know the guy?" he asks.
The guy turns. He's young, pretty, but with skin tanned and weathered from the sun. Freckles spread over the bridge of his nose and his full lips are chapped. "He was my buddy," he says. "And it wasn't a fucking shark, so if you're a reporterâ"
"I'm not a reporter," Dean says. "And I believe you. Why don't you tell me what you know."
The guy jerks his chin in the direction of the dunes behind them, and starts walking away. Dean follows.
"We were out there, you know?" the guy says, once they're seated in the dunes. "Chilling. The wind wasn't great, but we were just hanging out, shooting the shit. If we got a wave we got a wave, if we didn't..." He shrugs. "Jerry was my best mate." His voice cracks. "We've been surfing together since we were kids."
Dean's pockets are going to be full of sand. His boots are going to be full of sand. He's going to come out of this with sand everywhere. "What happened?"
"The wind started to get up. We were like, awesome, we might actually get a wave today, but then it got real bad, like in two minutes it went from calm as fuck to like six foot crossing swells and we both got dumped off our boards. And I saw this thing come out of the water behind Jerry." The guy puts his fingers in his mouth, chews at fingernails already bitten down to the quick. "It wasn't a fucking shark."
"What was it?"
The surfer shakes his head. "I've been in the ocean around here my whole fucking life. I've heard some weird shit. Seen some weird shit, but I've never seen anything like this. It was like, shaped like a dude, right? But skin like a shark. Big fucking eyes, huge. Black. And a weird nose, like, I dunno, a fucking snout thing. At first I thought it was an elephant seal, you know? I climbed back on my board and shouted to Jerry because we don't fuck with those things, they can be dangerous, but then it grabbed him. With arms. And then he was just gone. It pulled him down, took his board, too. A few seconds later the board popped back up again. Without him. The leash was cut through."
He chokes, sobs. "Jerry was just gone. He never came back up again."
"Okay," Dean says. He can already feel his skin burning under the California sun. "You got a computer?"
"Yeah." The surfer stands up, brushes the sand off his board shorts, and then sticks out his hand to pull Dean up. "I'm Bodhi," he says, because of course that's his name. "Come up to the house."
Probably had hippie surfer parents intent on raising hippie surfer kids. He's probably got a sister called Nirvana or Karma or something.
"Dean," Dean says, and rubs the sand off his jeans. Yep. Pockets full of sand.
Bodhi's house sits just above the sand dunes. It's small, but tidy, if you ignore the sand sprinkled over the hardwood floors. There's an ancient surfboard hanging on one wall, and the place is decorated with bits of driftwood and seashells and hibiscus illustrations.
He slides a laptop out from beneath a couch and opens it up, sets it on the coffee table. "Knock yourself out," he says, and then heads for the kitchen. "Coffee?"
"Thanks," Dean says. "Make a lot. This might take a while."
"It's called a 'Kabagon'," Dean says, as he closes the laptop. He's got about a liter of strong coffee flowing through his veins, and his brain is mush. Sam's better at this research shit. "Sea monster that hangs out in the Pacific. Fucks with the weather, capsizes boats, takes sailors. Pretty rare. I've never come across one before."
Bodhi's eyes go wide. "There are other sea monsters? Like, real life sea monsters? Krakens and shit?"
Dean shrugs. "This is my first sea monster. I usually deal with the land-based variety. I'll admit, I wasn't looking forward to figuring out how to kill this Kabagon thing out in the water, but apparently they come into land for a few nights after they feed. I'll go out tonight. With any luckâ"
"You kill monsters," Bodhi says, shock in his voice. "You're a monster killer."
"Hunter," Dean says. "What, are you vegan or something? This thing ate your friend. Should I just leave it to get someone else?"
Bodhi shakes his head. "No, it'sâ It's good. I want to help."
Dean bites back a retort about amateurs getting themselves killed. "I can handle it," he says. "You've been surfing since you were a kid? I've been hunting monsters since I was a kid. I know what I'm doing."
Dean's back sitting in the dunes as the sun sets. He's got his eyes on the shoreline, on the mesmerizing back and forth of the waves.
As stakeouts go... It's different. It's not tucked up comfy in the Impala with coffee and donuts. And it's not hunched in some filthy alley, the machete hidden beneath his jacket poking him in the thigh with every movement.
And it gives him too much time to think. The sound of the waves, the taste of salt air on his tongue, the radiating heat of the sand beneath his ass and his fingers. It's all hypnotic, and it allows his mind to wander.
The first thing he thinks of when he wakes in the morning, before awareness, before location, is Sam. As much as he wants to wipe his brotherâand what Sam didâfrom his mind, he can't. He'll never be able to do it.
The thought that Dean might go the rest of hisâalbeit shortâlife without seeing Sam, without hearing his voice, without knowing what he's doing and if he's safe or not, is becoming more insistent. Dean will never be able to forgive Sam for what he didâbut he doesn't hate him anymore. He can't. Sam is a part of Dean as much as Dean is a part of Sam. If their roles had been reversed on that terrible night, Dean might have done the same thing to save his brother's life.
But what Sam did was all for nothing. It got Dean a few more months. That's all. He's going to die anyway. No matter what either of them do, the hounds will come, and they'll drag Dean down into hell.
Hours pass. The moon rises, but it's waxing or waningâDean doesn't have a clueâand so the beach isn't as bright as it could be. He can see the shape of the waves, thinks he could make out a shape that doesn't fit if it appeared. If it even would come directly ashore in the same place he took Jerry beyond the waves.
It will all rely on chance and luck.
There's a crunch of sand behind him. Dean turns, and finds Bodhi making his way through the dunes toward him.
"I bought coffee," Bodhi says, his voice soft against the night, kind and calm. Inwardly, Dean snorts. His presence is like a kind of inner peace. Damn hippie surfers.
"Thanks," Dean says. "Appreciate it." He takes the cup Bodhi pours from a thermos and buries his nose in it, inhaling the scent. It's probably fair trade or organic or something. To Dean, it's just coffee. Strong. Black. Effective. "I don't even know if I'm in the right damn place. It could come up miles down the beachâor not at all."
"You're doing something," Bodhi says, and tucks a lock of wavy blond hair behind his ear. "It's more than anyone else even tried to do. You believed me."
There's a single-strand beaded bracelet around his wrist. The beads are all black, except for six or seven colored beads, arranged in a rainbow.
"Was Jerry your boyfriend?" Dean asks.
Bodhi looks up at Dean from beneath long eyelashes. Gives him a conspiratorial smile tinged with sadness. "Just friends," Bodhi says. "Best friends. Jerry never cared that I wasn't into girls. More for him, he said."
Bodhi reminds Dean of Sam. Hell, everything reminds Dean of Sam, but there's definitely something Sam-like about this kid. Not so much with the looks, but his height, the spread of his shoulders, the way he ducks his head and then looks up at Dean while tucking his long hair behind his ear. The soft calm of his voice, the peace Dean feels around himâ
Except for that night under the bridge. That was anything but peace. It was violence and desperation and Dean wished he was in hell instead of with his brother just so it wouldn't be true.
Dean drags his eyes away from the young man who lost his friend, puts them back on the shoreline. "I'll sit out here all night if I have to," he says.
"Thank you," Bodhi breathes.
Dean shivers. The hair on the back of his neck lifts, and even in the cool night air, he starts to sweat. He turns, and everything slows. The breeze grows thick, heavy. The strands of Bodhi's hair that glow in the moonlight seem to levitate.
And Bodhi's eyes, so blue during the day, have gone dark. Dean's eyes are drawn to Bodhi's lips and he wonders what they might feel like on his own. The sunburned skin, rough, against his own. What Bodhi might taste like. Coconut. Salt and sand and chapstick.
Heat coils in his belly, spreads through every part of him. What the fuck did Sam do to him? Did he wake something up? Some latent desire that was lurking inside him all along?
Or is this part of the curse?
Whatever his fears, Dean can't pull away. They hang there, in a kind of liminal moment, staring into each others eyes, panting against each others lips, just an inch away from kissing.
It's inevitable. It's going to happen. All Dean has to do is lean inâ
Their mouths almost touch. Almost, when Bodhi gasps and jerks back and Dean thinks he's done something wrong, read something wrong but then Bodhi scrambles back, pointing. "There," he hisses. "That's it. It's there."
Dean drops his coffee cup into the sand, splashes cooling coffee down his jeans leg. His eyes scan the waves and then he finds it.
It's shaped like a man, but thick-necked. The arms are longer than they should be, the legs shorter, and it walks with high steps, like a dude wearing flippers.
It steps out of the waves, and then heads down the beach away from them.
"Stay here," Dean hisses, and rises into a crouch, trusting the dunes to hide his movement. "I'm fucking serious. Stay here."
He pulls his knife out of his jacket. It's sharp, real silver, and he's got his gun as well, if it becomes necessary, but he'd prefer to do this quiet.
And then he rounds the edge of the dunes and goes after it.
The sand crunches beneath Dean's boots. The surf rushes up to wipe away the creatures strange footprints after every slow step. On land, the thing is slow and ungainly, and this is going to be an easy kill.
"Hey, Ugly," Dean calls, when he's just a few feet behind it, so close he can smell the sea on it, can smell the fishy, salty air it leaves behind.
Light from the moon glints off of Dean's silver blade. The creature turns, and huge black eyes fall to the weapon, before it lifts them to Dean's face and opens its mouth.
Black lips stretch wide to expose rows of gleaming, pointed teeth. The rest of it is like a vast, black cavern, and the sound it makes is a gurgling, bubbling screech.
"Gross," Dean says, as he lunges forward, going for the place where the heart would be if the thing was human, and it's always a gamble when he doesn't know for sure, but he's got to start somewhere.
But those long fucking arms take hold of Dean. The webbed skin of the creature's hands is slick, slimy, like a decomposing shark. Dean twists out of its grip, but then he stumbles, and he falls into the surf as it rolls up onto the beach.
Dean fights to get his feet beneath him, to get his boots into the sand, but quicker than should have been possible the kabagon has hold of him again, and then he's pulled out into the waves.
"Dean."
The sound of his name comes from the shore, and Dean's head breaks the surface and sees Bodhi running down the beach, into the water. Dean sees him dive into the waves and then he goes under again.
This is it. He's going to be eaten by a fucking sea monster, with his boots still on and sand filling the pockets of his jeans. He's going to die, a few months early, and then he's going to go to hell.
It should have happened that night under the bridge. At least the last thing he would have seen would have been Sam's face. Now, his last memory when he gets to hell will be the crunch of his own bones and the burn of salt water in his lungs.
It's not in Dean to give up, though. Even while he's drowning, he thrashes out with the blade still in his hand, feels it catch, feels it tear. The kabagon screams through the water as Dean rips through its skin, but he's got no idea if he got something vital or not. Dean pulls up his knees, braces his boots on the monster, and he grabs hold of the thing by the neck. With this leverage he lifts his hand, brings it down on the shapeless mass that is all he can see of its head through the swirling, murky sea.
He doesn't have enough force behind the thrust. The water slows him down. The blade gets stuck, on meat, on bone, so he pulls it free and tries again.
This time his blade finds something soft, pliable. The creature thrashes, tossing Dean like a rag doll beneath the water. With his last ounce of strength Dean drives the knife in deeper, as deep as it will go, as deep as his burning muscles can drive it.
And the monster goes still. The webbed hand releases him. The last thing Dean sees through the water, lit by the moon above the waves, is a dark mass sinking, the last image the hilt of Dean's silver blade sticking out of one huge, bulging black eye.
Then something else grabs hold of Dean and lifts him to the surface. Dean sucks in air, coughs up seawater, and he clings to Bodhi as his boots and his jeans threaten to pull him back down.
"I got you," Bodhi says, holding Dean above the surface of the water, pulling him along as his strong legs and arm take them quickly back into shore.
"I'm pissed off about my knife," Dean says. "It was a damn good blade."
Wrapped in a blanket, Dean sits on Bodhi's couch. He's not sure if the sand rubbing against his skin was already on the couch or if its just what he brought in from the beach with him. His boots and his jeans and his shirts are still where he left them in a sodden pile on the porch, and if they dry overnight they'll dry encrusted with salt and sand.
"Thank you," Bodhi says. "Thank you for killing the thing that killed my friend."
"It's the job," Dean tries to say, but the words get cut off because Bodhi's leaning over and kissing him.
It's not new. It's not that different. If there's one good thing about this job it's the steady stream of grateful kisses after the monster is dead, but Dean's never had a dude lay one on him before. And yet, after that moment on the beach right before the kabagon came crawling out of the sea, he shouldn't be surprised.
And he's not sure he wants it to stop.
But he gently pushes Bodhi away. "You don't have to," he whispers, even as he can taste Bodhi on his lips, even as he can't tear his eyes away from the surfer's mouth. "It's the job. We don'tâI don't do it for this."
Bodhi leans back. A slow smile spreads over his face. "Let me guess," he says. "You get a lot of grateful people throwing themselves at you after you rescue them."
Dean shrugs. It's not completely inaccurate.
Bodhi leans in again, and he brushes his lips over Dean's, and he tastes like salt, like the sea, and, even in the middle of the night, he smells like sunshine. "If you remember," he whispers, his voice gone low and rough. "I rescued you. I pulled you out of the sea, dragged you up onto the shore. I was kinda hoping you might throw yourself at me."
"Fuck," Dean says, as desire coils in his belly, as the usual dynamics of the aftermath of a job flip, and the masculine smell of the surfer, his muscular arms and legs, his broad, strong shoulders make him think things, remember things, both arousing and traumatic. "Yeah," he says, as he puts his hand on the back of Bodhi's neck and pulls him in. "You fucking did," he says. "And I'm so fucking grateful."
Dean's head spins. He's a mess up there, and he took on this job to forget, but all it's doing is sending him flashes of that night beneath the bridge. The heat inside him, the weight of his brother on his back, the smell of salt, of sweat, of leaf mold and damp soil.
Like the hunt, the knowledge that he was drowning put it all in perspective, maybe Bodhi can do that for him, too. Maybe he can wipe away what Sam did to him, replace it with another memory, one he can cling to when the hounds finally come for him, something he can remember when he's burning in hell, something to call up between flayings that will give him some small measure of comfort.
"Touch me," Dean gasps as he pulls out of the kiss. "Fuck," he says. "I want you to touch me." He shakes out of the blanket he's wrapped in, throws it off so all he's wearing is a pair of Bodhi's board shorts, tied at the waist with a shoelace. He reaches out and twists his fingers into the t-shirt the surfer is wearing. "Get it off," he says.
Bodhi leaps up from the couch and he pulls Dean up, too. And then he strips off his shirt, drops it to the floor, and he pulls Dean back in, kisses him deep, licking into Dean's mouth until Dean can't think, until he's drowning again.
Board shorts are fucking thin, and Dean can feel Bodhi's cock, hard against his own. Fuck, this is new, but thrilling. What might it feel like to have another man's cock in his hand, in his mouth, in hisâ
It's not his brother inside him. It's some demon, or the devil himself, grunting as he pushes deeper into Dean's body, over and over again.
Dean shakes his head to clear it. He's not having flashbacks, not now. He pushes it down, deep inside where all his trauma lives, where he hides it, even from himself. "I'm good," he says, as he registers Bodhi's hesitation. "You got a bed? Or are we gonna do it right here?"
Bodhi grins and grabs Dean by the hand and pulls him through a door.
Past a bathroom, past a room that must have belonged to Jerryâan unmade bed and a bunch of surfboards, and into another room with another unmade bed and surfboards, and there's still that same gritty feel of sand against the hardwood floor beneath Dean's bare feet.
Dean turns, and looks. He's going to do it. He's going to have sex with a man. It's not as momentous or as scary as he thought it might be, Dean loves sex, he's just never had the opportunity or the drive to have it with a man beforeâ
Sam doesn't count.
Bodhi comes up behind him, presses his bare chest to Dean's back, kisses his neck. "I wanted this from the moment I laid eyes on you," he breathes, and then slides his hands down, over Dean's shoulders, down his bare arms, and then circles Dean's wrists with his fingers.
No, Sammy. Please, Sammy. You don't want to do this.
Dean starts to sweat, salt prickling at his temples. He forces himself to be still, to resist the twitch that would push Bodhi away.
He wants this. He wants it.
I'd rather die than be saved like this.
"I wanna fuck you, Dean," Bodhi says. "Will you let me fuck you?"
You wanted to fuck me. All you needed was the chance to do it, a reason to do it, an excuse.
Dean whines, shakes, arousal and fear all twisted up inside him until he can't tell one from the other. He can feel it, he can still feel his brother inside him, Sam's big cock stabbing at his insides, making him hard when he didn't want to be.
You're fucking a corpse, Sam.
Dean pulls away, and he makes a sound that's all frustration and all fear and all anguish, and he hides his face as he sits on the edge of Bodhi's bed. "I'm sorry," he says. "I can't. I can't do it, I'm so sorry."
The mattress dips beside him. Bodhi's warmth, like sunshine, radiates against Dean's side. "It's okay," Bodhi says, softly, so gentle. "You've never been with a dude before, have you?"
"I have," Dean says, as another flash hits him, of the ticking car beneath him, and his brother sweating, huffing, grunting on his back. "And I haven't. Not like this. Because it wasn't exactly my choice."
You're gonna join me in the fire, Sammy. I hate you. I fucking hate you for doing this to me, Sam, and I'm gonna hate you till my year is up.
Bodhi gasps. He reaches out, and his hands flutter over Dean' skin, like he's too afraid to touch, like Dean might spook. "No," he says, pain, anguish in his voice, like he can feel all of Dean's torment, like Dean's infected him somehow with the darkness that dwells in that deep, hidden place inside him. "I'm so sorry, Dean. I'm so fucking sorry."
I'm sorry, Dean. I'm so fucking sorry, but I can't let you die.
Dean lifts his head. He doesn't remember crying, but he knows that tears are streaking his face, because he can feel the salt, crusting, pulling on his cheeks as they dry. He shakes his head. He doesn't want to hear Bodhi saying it, because all Dean hears is his brother's voice.
I can't let you die.
"It's this job," Dean says. He reaches out and traces the freckles that cover the bridge of Bodhi's nose, scattered like the sand on his hardwood floors. "Stay in the sun, kid. You don't wanna be anywhere near this darkness. You lost your friend, but the thing that killed him is gone. Don't let it drag you down, because it's really fucking hard to crawl your way out again."
Dean will never have the chance to crawl out of the hole he's been in since his mother burned and he fled the house with baby Sam in his arms.
I can't let you die.
He's only got a few months left on this earth. The closest Dean's ever been to the kind of light Bodhi spends his life in is Sam.
I can't let you die.
Dean's going to hell because he sold his soul for his brother's life.
You're gonna join me in the fire, Sammy.
Sam damned his own soul for Dean's life. For just a few months of Dean's life.
Dean sat with his brother's corpse, made a plan, and brought Sam back from the dead.
Sam didn't have that kind of time. He panicked, and he did the only thing he could do. He did the only thing that was available to him.
If their roles had been reversed, Dean might have done the same thing.
I can't let you die.
Dean would have done the same thing.
Dean doesn't turn his phone on until he's out of California. It blows up, of course, a million missed calls and text messages, but he tosses it into the glove box and ignores the notifications.
When he pulls into a truck stop diner as dusk is falling into night, he takes it out of the glove box, and puts it in his pocket.
It rings while he's got a mouthful of cheese and bacon and hamburger and bun, but he answers it anyway.
"Hurumph," he says, and then swallows. Bread sticks in his throat. "Just tell me where you are. I'll come to you."
Sam's in Montana. Dean caught something about Bigfoot, but Sam knows as well as Dean does that Bigfoot doesn't exist. It's not uncommon, however, for 'squatchers to catch the attention of the real monsters that frequent remote areas.
So Dean heads for Montana.
Dean pulls up outside the motel Sam texted him the address of. Dread has been building, slowly increasing with each mile that fell away beneath him, and now it's a maelstrom inside his head, fear like Dean's never felt before.
His heart is in his throat. Pounding like it's going to burst. His palms are sweaty and every instinct tells him to flee.
He spots Sam's stolen car immediately. It's an ancient Mazda with Kansas plates. White. Dinged and rusted. There's a faded pine tree air freshener hanging from the rear view mirror.
Dean knocks on the door it's parked in front of. 13. That doesn't fucking bode well.
Over the pounding of his pulse in his ears, he hears movement from inside. And then his brother appears as the door cracks open. Dean knows there's a handgun just out of sight, but Sam quickly slides it into the back of his jeans and opens the door wide.
"Dean," he says, and there's all kinds of wonder and anguish in his voice. "Dean."
Dean's skin starts to crawl as the smell of his brother washes over him. The smell that used to mean home and family and safety and love, and now just takes him back to that night beneath the bridge.
"You gonna get out of the fucking way and let me in? Or are you gonna tell me about this job while I stand out here?"
He could push past. Back in the old days, he would have shoved his little brother out of the way and barged into the room like he owned it.
But he can't. As it is, he stepped back when Sam answered the door. Any closer and his skin is going to start to twitch.
Sam steps back inside, but he still stands there, holding the door. Dean slips past as quickly as he can, and he looks around the inside of the room.
Plaid wallpaper and pine paneling. A faded painting of a herd of buffalo grazing on the wall. A starburst clock above the kitchenette. Dean takes it in, all in the blink of an eye, and then he trains his gaze back on Sam. Watching. Waiting.
"Dean," Sam says.
Dean shakes his head. He gets where Sam was coming from. He understands, because he can admit, at least to himself, that he would have done the same if their roles had been reversed that night.
But he doesn't know if he'll ever be able to forgive.
"I'm here to hunt, Sam," Dean says. "Just tell me about the job. I don't wanna talk about anything else."
Sam seems to get it. He keeps his distance. Remains in Dean's line of sight. He gives Dean dates and names and snippets of lore. It's a werewolf, Sam thinks. A group of Bigfoot hunters were found by a ranger ripped to shreds, hearts removed, a few days after the full moon. The month before it was a couple of hikers. The pattern goes back six months. Campers. Hikers. A newbie park ranger. All on or around the full moon.
"So it's a local," Dean says. "Whoever it is, they're not just passing through."
"There's a couple of cabins in the area." Sam's eyes are shifty, nervous. He'll meet Dean's eyes and then quickly look away. He pulls a few pages of notes out from beneath a pile of maps and lays them on the table and then steps back away. "I'm liking this guy for it. Loner. No family. Spent a few nights in the hospital six months ago. Some kind of animal attack. I'll put money on it being a werewolf that bit him."
"Then what the fuck have you been waiting for, Sam?" Unlike Sam, Dean doesn't have a problem meeting his brother's eyes. It's important. Like watching a monster he's hunting for the moment before he strikes. And there's a part of him that wants to unnerve his brother. To punish him. "Isn't that enough proof?"
"I was waiting for you, Dean." Sam's eyes are cast down on the floor. His hands are balled into nervous, twitchy fists at his sides. His voice is small, quiet, choked with emotion. "Dean, I'm so sorry."
Dean doesn't need this. Not right now. He needs to hunt, needs to come back to his brother without confronting what Sam did to him, without addressing the betrayal that should haveâstill mightâdestroy their entire relationship.
He's here because he doesn't blame Sam for what he did. But it broke something in Dean. It broke the trust he has in the one person in the world he could trust.
It broke Dean's existence, his entire world view.
Sam ruined Dean's lifeâwhat there is left of itâand Dean can't even blame him for doing it.
They confront the guy in his cabin. There's a basement beneath the house. It's not much more than a root cellar, but the guy had tried to lock himself up. Month after month, he'd gotten out and killed people.
And he just sits there, resigned and accepting, as Dean puts a silver bullet in his heart.
"We do that," Dean says, later than night when they're in the car on the way out of town, Sam's stolen junker abandoned in the motel lot. "We do shit like that, Sam. Did you see him? He knew what had to happen. He knew he was going to die, that there was no way out of it. And he accepted it." There's a lump in Dean's throat. It's choking him, fighting with him to stop the words that he's determined to get out.
"So why can't we do that, Sam? You could have let me die. You should have let me die. I told you to let me fucking die, Sam. I should have let you stay dead. But I couldn't. Why can't we just let each other go?"
They're both silent for a long time. Miles go by beneath them. They cross the state line into Wyoming. Dean thinks Sam's gone to sleep, with his head pillowed on a rolled up hoodie against the window.
"He was alone," Sam says. Dean has to look at him to make sure he's not hearing things, to make sure Sam's eyes are open. "He didn't have anybody."
Sam's right. All Sam and Dean have is each other, but that counts for a lot. Or it did.
No. It still does count. Dean wouldn't have come back if it didn't. Sam wouldn't have texted and called him every single day since Dean left if it didn't count.
"I don'tâ" Dean says. His voice is a croak. He clears his throat and tries again. "I get why you did it." That night beneath the bridge appears in his mind. He's driving in the dark, down long roads bracketed by ancient trees. Every side road makes his heart leap into his throat, but they're hundreds of miles away from that bridge, from the rain and mud and the rivulets of water streaming down from the road that Dean wished would wash him away to drown in the river. "And I know, now, that I would do the same thing if I found myself in your situation that night. Because, Sam. I don't wanna be here without you."
Dean keeps his eyes on the road, but he can still hear the rough intake of breath as Sam gasps, can still see in his periphery Sam sit up straight in the passenger seat.
"But," Dean continues. This is important. He has to make Sam understand. "You know I don't got a lot of time left. I'm going to hell, Sam. Nothing either of us can do will stop it." Dean takes his eyes off the road and looks at his brother. "You've got to accept it. I'm gonna tell you now, and you have to promise me. After what you did I'm going out on a hell of a limb to trust you again. To forgive you for what you did to me. You have to accept that I'm going to die."
"Deanâ" Sam's voice is so broken, so anguished.
Dean shakes his head. "No, Sammy." It's the first time Dean's called him that since it happened. "You promise me. You owe me that."
After what you did to me. Dean doesn't say it out loud. He doesn't have to. It hangs between them, thick, heavy, dark. An almost physical barrier between them.
"I promise," Sam says. His voice breaks on a sob. "I promise, Dean."
Life goes on, such as it is. They drive, and they hunt, and Dean's clock ticks down.
Sam keeps his distance. He doesn't touch Dean unless he has to. He gets up and moves if even Dean gets too close.
And at first, that's good. But as time goes by Dean starts to feel isolated. Starved for something physical.
And he could pick up a girl in any one of the bars along their path. But, like the girl in the bar on the way to California, Dean's not interested.
He thinks of Bodhi a lot. The scent of salt and sand and sunshine. Zen and gentle as he touched Dean, kissed him. And he looks at Sam and sees that same calm, that same solidity, and yet Sam was the one who knocked him out andâ
They come up against an acheri. It comes up behind Dean, and he panics, and it slices him across the shoulders with its long, sharp claws.
They come out of the hunt okay, but Dean needs stitches. Sam talks about taking him to the hospital, but there are too many questions at the hospital, too many forms to fill out, too many fake identities to deal with, and they have to be on the road and out of town because too many civilians have seen their faces in connection with that strange, parentless child that turned up right when people started getting murdered, torn apart, and now that strange, parentless child is nowhere to be seen.
"Just get it done," Dean says, as he hands Sam the sewing kit and a bottle of cheap whiskey. "I got my antibiotics." He shakes the bottle of pills he dug out of the bottom of his duffel and sits himself on the edge of the bed he's been sleeping in. The one closest to the door.
He used to take that bed so he was between Sam and danger, then it became the bed he took because it was closer to escape.
He can't decide whether he's past that yet, whether he takes it out of habit or if he still needs the escape route.
This will tell him. "Just sew me up, Sammy. And do it quick. You know we have to get the fuck out of town."
Dean takes deep, calming breaths. In, slow. Out, slow. He twitches when Sam touches him, and sighs when Sam flinches away. "I'm good," Dean says. "I'm okay. Just get it done."
Dean grabs the bottle and drinks when Sam's not using it to clean the wound. He keeps drinking to a point where he doesn't twitch away when Sam holds him by the shoulder to keep Dean still as he pulls the needle through Dean's flesh. He drinks to a point where it's clear that Sam's going to be the one driving when they leave.
And he's okay. He closes his eyes and remembers Bodhi behind him. Salt and sand and sunshine. But he can smell Sam. Post-hunt sweat and blood and gunpowder. And he feels oddly safe. He shouldn't, but he does.
They drive, and they hunt, and Dean's clock ticks down. Sam keeps his promise. He stopped looking for a loophole, for an out for Dean's deal.
Dean starts sleeping in the motel bed further from the door. He starts rolling away from Sam at night, and he sleeps fine. He starts seeking out the kind of contact from his brother they had beforeâthe shoulder bump, the leaning in when they're doing research.
And he finds himself seeking more than that. Leaning in to inhale the smell of Sam, the smell of home. He puts himself in Sam's path, and he ignores the surprise and hesitance that Sam's body language puts out when he does it.
"Come here," he says to his brother, one day when they're trying to figure out what the hell kind of monster has been disappearing people, only to return them a few days later with no memory of where they've been, but with PTSD like they've seen combat.
Without thinking, when Sam doesn't move fast enough to see what Dean's looking at on the laptop over his shoulder, Dean turns around and grabs hold of the front of his brother's shirt, and drags him to stand behind where Dean is sitting at the table.
On the screen is a website about alien abduction. It's not aliens, it's never aliens, it's always some kind of monster, but there are cases here that echo the kind of thing they're dealing with.
Dean should be using his finger to point out the paragraph he called Sam over to see, but the case, the alien website, gets suddenly pushed out of his mind as he realizes what he's done. Sam stands behind him, so close Dean can feel the warmth of his brother's body against his back. He leans back in the chair and looks up at his brother, and it hurts when he's met by Sam's sad, scared eyes.
Dean reaches behind him, and he puts his hand on Sam's thigh. It's okay, he wants to say, but there's something stuck in his throat and he can't speak. So he just squeezes Sam's thigh and gives him a smile; soft, gentle, slow.
And then he shifts his attention back to the alien abduction website. "Obviously it's not aliens," he says. "But look at thisâ"
They drive, and they hunt, and Dean's clock ticks down.
They just got done with a haunting. It was the kind of job they can do with their eyes closed. Find the grave, burn the bones. They were called here, to an historic hotel in Maine, and the owner put them up and everything. They each have their own room, linked by a door between, and as much room service and booze as they want, and best of all, they don't have to tear out of town as soon as the job is done.
The owner of the hotel is so grateful that he said Sam and Dean can stay as long as they want.
Dean actually feels almost happy. Almost content. Of course there's the looming dread of hellhounds in his future, and he can see that same dread in his brother's eyes, but all things considered, things are pretty good.
The whole separate rooms thing is messing with Dean's head, though.
He should be happy to have his own space for a change. But it just feels weird. He deals with it, until he can't deal with it any more, and the second night after they sent the ghost to hell he knocks on the door between their rooms at about midnight, carrying a bottle of the best whiskey the hotel has to offer in his hand.
And then he opens the door and slips through. Sam's sitting on the bed, his laptop open in front of him. Probably looking for another job.
Dean makes a beeline for the glasses sitting upside down on a tray, grabs them, and then pulls a chair up beside the queen sized bed identical to the one next door.
"I can't sleep," Dean says, as he waits for Sam to set the laptop aside and then hands him a glass. "Thought I might as well get drunk."
He pours a generous measure into each glass and then clinks his own against his brother's. "To a cushy job, if only there were more like this one."
"Cheers," Sam says, and drinks, but he doesn't take his eyes off of Dean.
There's always caution in Sam's eyes these days. Caution, and fear, and dread. Dean doesn't have a lot of time left.
Dean has that same feeling of dread, a darkness that swirls in his core. But there's also a drive to act. A deep, instinctive urge that he's got to wring as much as he can from life before it ends. An urge to heal things with his brother.
And more.
Dean watches Sam as he drinks, as he licks away the bead of alcohol that hangs on his lips. A not unfamiliar heat spreads over his skin.
"Shove over," Dean says, and he climbs onto the bed beside his brother. He wedges the bottle between his thighs, and he leans against Sam's shoulder. He looks at Sam until Sam looks back at him, and tension hangs between them like it did on the beach between Dean and the surfer, and it's fucking delicious, so delicious Dean doesn't want it to ever end.
The tension is stronger here. Because they're brothers. Because of what happened that night under the bridge. Because in just a few weeks, Dean will be dead. It grows and grows until Dean can't stand it anymore, and he leans in, lifts his chin, and he presses his mouth to Sam's.
Sam whimpers, and he breathes hard, and Dean can feel him shaking. And then there are tears running over his cheeks, and he opens his mouth on a sob, and Dean opens his mouth, too and he moans as his stomach flips and a pulse of arousal flows through him.
They're kissing. Kind of. Dean's moaning into Sam's mouth, and Sam's just kind of sobbing. Dean licks at Sam's lips and he tastes like salt. And then Sam moans and he puts his hand, still holding a glass of whiskey, on the back of Dean's neck and then they're really kissing, Sam dipping his tongue into Dean's mouth, the glass knocking against the back of Dean's head as Sam pulls him in.
Dean's so fucking hard, and he clenches his thighs tight around the bottle and whiskey spills, sticky, over Dean's fingers as he struggles to hold his glass upright.
He pushes Sam away. Throws the contents of his glass down his throat. Takes Sam's glass from him, and the bottle, and puts them on the cabinet next to the bed.
"You okay?" he says, and it's almost a whisper. He puts his hand on the back of Sam's neck, threads his fingers through Sam's hair.
Sam looks stunned. Tear tracks stain his face. "Are you?"
Dean's not having flashbacks. Oh, he remembers. He remembers the rain and the mud. He remembers the ticking of the engine as it cooled and his jeans around his thighs and the weight of his brother inside him.
He's got no romantic notions of that night, and yet, he remembers his cock betraying him, he remembers being hard against the steel body of the Impala because Sam was inside him. Oh, it was because Sam was battering his prostate at the time, there was pleasure with the pain, and that night was terrible, horrific, but there have been a lot of horrific moments in their lives, and Dean and Sam both have done horrific things to each other in the name of love.
"I love you," Dean says, as he looks up into Sam's wide, startled eyes. "And I want you." He looks down Sam's body, stops when his eyes reach Sam's cock, tenting his loose-fitting jeans.
Dean bites his lip and then throws his leg over his brother so he's straddling Sam's thighs. He settles so their cocks are pressing together through layers of rough denim. He leans forward and drags his lips over Sam's. Not kissing. Just breathing. "I want you inside me," he whispers, slowly, ever so slowly rocking against his brother. His heart starts to beat erratically, too fast. "Not behind me, Sam. Iâ I can't. But I do want you toâ I wantâ" He starts to pant, to gasp, and he rubs himself harder against Sam's cock. "I want you in me. I wantâ"
Sam takes hold of Dean's hips, and he kisses Dean, cutting off his words. The layers of denim are a hindrance, the clanking of their belt buckles as they knock together a taunt, so Dean tears at their belts, at their flies, and he breathes noisily through his nose as Sam steals his breath and they rut together, moaning, grunting, gasping into each other's mouths until they come together, spilling over each other's bellies in a violent outpouring of love and lust and fear and desperation. Life goes on, such as it is. They drive, and they hunt, and Dean's clock ticks down.
Sam keeps his distance. He doesn't touch Dean unless he has to. He gets up and moves if even Dean gets too close.
And at first, that's good. But as time goes by Dean starts to feel isolated. Starved for something physical.
And he could pick up a girl in any one of the bars along their path. But, like the girl in the bar on the way to California, Dean's not interested.
He thinks of Bodhi a lot. The scent of salt and sand and sunshine. Zen and gentle as he touched Dean, kissed him. And he looks at Sam and sees that same calm, that same solidity, and yet Sam was the one who knocked him out andâ
They come up against an acheri. It comes up behind Dean, and he panics, and it slices him across the shoulders with its long, sharp claws.
They come out of the hunt okay, but Dean needs stitches. Sam talks about taking him to the hospital, but there are too many questions at the hospital, too many forms to fill out, too many fake identities to deal with, and they have to be on the road and out of town because too many civilians have seen their faces in connection with that strange, parentless child that turned up right when people started getting murdered, torn apart, and now that strange, parentless child is nowhere to be seen.
"Just get it done," Dean says, as he hands Sam the sewing kit and a bottle of cheap whiskey. "I got my antibiotics." He shakes the bottle of pills he dug out of the bottom of his duffel and sits himself on the edge of the bed he's been sleeping in. The one closest to the door.
He used to take that bed so he was between Sam and danger, then it became the bed he took because it was closer to escape.
He can't decide whether he's past that yet, whether he takes it out of habit or if he still needs the escape route.
This will tell him. "Just sew me up, Sammy. And do it quick. You know we have to get the fuck out of town."
Dean takes deep, calming breaths. In, slow. Out, slow. He twitches when Sam touches him, and sighs when Sam flinches away. "I'm good," Dean says. "I'm okay. Just get it done."
Dean grabs the bottle and drinks when Sam's not using it to clean the wound. He keeps drinking to a point where he doesn't twitch away when Sam holds him by the shoulder to keep Dean still as he pulls the needle through Dean's flesh. He drinks to a point where it's clear that Sam's going to be the one driving when they leave.
And he's okay. He closes his eyes and remembers Bodhi behind him. Salt and sand and sunshine. But he can smell Sam. Post-hunt sweat and blood and gunpowder. And he feels oddly safe. He shouldn't, but he does.
They drive, and they hunt, and Dean's clock ticks down. Sam keeps his promise. He stopped looking for a loophole, for an out for Dean's deal.
Dean starts sleeping in the motel bed further from the door. He starts rolling away from Sam at night, and he sleeps fine. He starts seeking out the kind of contact from his brother they had beforeâthe shoulder bump, the leaning in when they're doing research.
And he finds himself seeking more than that. Leaning in to inhale the smell of Sam, the smell of home. He puts himself in Sam's path, and he ignores the surprise and hesitance that Sam's body language puts out when he does it.
"Come here," he says to his brother, one day when they're trying to figure out what the hell kind of monster has been disappearing people, only to return them a few days later with no memory of where they've been, but with PTSD like they've seen combat.
Without thinking, when Sam doesn't move fast enough to see what Dean's looking at on the laptop over his shoulder, Dean turns around and grabs hold of the front of his brother's shirt, and drags him to stand behind where Dean is sitting at the table.
On the screen is a website about alien abduction. It's not aliens, it's never aliens, it's always some kind of monster, but there are cases here that echo the kind of thing they're dealing with.
Dean should be using his finger to point out the paragraph he called Sam over to see, but the case, the alien website, gets suddenly pushed out of his mind as he realizes what he's done. Sam stands behind him, so close Dean can feel the warmth of his brother's body against his back. He leans back in the chair and looks up at his brother, and it hurts when he's met by Sam's sad, scared eyes.
Dean reaches behind him, and he puts his hand on Sam's thigh. It's okay, he wants to say, but there's something stuck in his throat and he can't speak. So he just squeezes Sam's thigh and gives him a smile; soft, gentle, slow.
And then he shifts his attention back to the alien abduction website. "Obviously it's not aliens," he says. "But look at thisâ"
They drive, and they hunt, and Dean's clock ticks down.
They just got done with a haunting. It was the kind of job they can do with their eyes closed. Find the grave, burn the bones. They were called here, to an historic hotel in Maine, and the owner put them up and everything. They each have their own room, linked by a door between, and as much room service and booze as they want, and best of all, they don't have to tear out of town as soon as the job is done.
The owner of the hotel is so grateful that he said Sam and Dean can stay as long as they want.
Dean actually feels almost happy. Almost content. Of course there's the looming dread of hellhounds in his future, and he can see that same dread in his brother's eyes, but all things considered, things are pretty good.
The whole separate rooms thing is messing with Dean's head, though.
He should be happy to have his own space for a change. But it just feels weird. He deals with it, until he can't deal with it any more, and the second night after they sent the ghost to hell he knocks on the door between their rooms at about midnight, carrying a bottle of the best whiskey the hotel has to offer in his hand.
And then he opens the door and slips through. Sam's sitting on the bed, his laptop open in front of him. Probably looking for another job.
Dean makes a beeline for the glasses sitting upside down on a tray, grabs them, and then pulls a chair up beside the queen sized bed identical to the one next door.
"I can't sleep," Dean says, as he waits for Sam to set the laptop aside and then hands him a glass. "Thought I might as well get drunk."
He pours a generous measure into each glass and then clinks his own against his brother's. "To a cushy job, if only there were more like this one."
"Cheers," Sam says, and drinks, but he doesn't take his eyes off of Dean.
There's always caution in Sam's eyes these days. Caution, and fear, and dread. Dean doesn't have a lot of time left.
Dean has that same feeling of dread, a darkness that swirls in his core. But there's also a drive to act. A deep, instinctive urge that he's got to wring as much as he can from life before it ends. An urge to heal things with his brother.
And more.
Dean watches Sam as he drinks, as he licks away the bead of alcohol that hangs on his lips. A not unfamiliar heat spreads over his skin.
"Shove over," Dean says, and he climbs onto the bed beside his brother. He wedges the bottle between his thighs, and he leans against Sam's shoulder. He looks at Sam until Sam looks back at him, and tension hangs between them like it did on the beach between Dean and the surfer, and it's fucking delicious, so delicious Dean doesn't want it to ever end.
The tension is stronger here. Because they're brothers. Because of what happened that night under the bridge. Because in just a few weeks, Dean will be dead. It grows and grows until Dean can't stand it anymore, and he leans in, lifts his chin, and he presses his mouth to Sam's.
Sam whimpers, and he breathes hard, and Dean can feel him shaking. And then there are tears running over his cheeks, and he opens his mouth on a sob, and Dean opens his mouth, too and he moans as his stomach flips and a pulse of arousal flows through him.
They're kissing. Kind of. Dean's moaning into Sam's mouth, and Sam's just kind of sobbing. Dean licks at Sam's lips and he tastes like salt. And then Sam moans and he puts his hand, still holding a glass of whiskey, on the back of Dean's neck and then they're really kissing, Sam dipping his tongue into Dean's mouth, the glass knocking against the back of Dean's head as Sam pulls him in.
Dean's so fucking hard, and he clenches his thighs tight around the bottle and whiskey spills, sticky, over Dean's fingers as he struggles to hold his glass upright.
He pushes Sam away. Throws the contents of his glass down his throat. Takes Sam's glass from him, and the bottle, and puts them on the cabinet next to the bed.
"You okay?" he says, and it's almost a whisper. He puts his hand on the back of Sam's neck, threads his fingers through Sam's hair.
Sam looks stunned. Tear tracks stain his face. "Are you?"
Dean's not having flashbacks. Oh, he remembers. He remembers the rain and the mud. He remembers the ticking of the engine as it cooled and his jeans around his thighs and the weight of his brother inside him.
He's got no romantic notions of that night, and yet, he remembers his cock betraying him, he remembers being hard against the steel body of the Impala because Sam was inside him. Oh, it was because Sam was battering his prostate at the time, there was pleasure with the pain, and that night was terrible, horrific, but there have been a lot of horrific moments in their lives, and Dean and Sam both have done horrific things to each other in the name of love.
"I love you," Dean says, as he looks up into Sam's wide, startled eyes. "And I want you." He looks down Sam's body, stops when his eyes reach Sam's cock, tenting his loose-fitting jeans.
Dean bites his lip and then throws his leg over his brother so he's straddling Sam's thighs. He settles so their cocks are pressing together through layers of rough denim. He leans forward and drags his lips over Sam's. Not kissing. Just breathing. "I want you inside me," he whispers, slowly, ever so slowly rocking against his brother. His heart starts to beat erratically, too fast. "Not behind me, Sam. Iâ I can't. But I do want you toâ I wantâ" He starts to pant, to gasp, and he rubs himself harder against Sam's cock. "I want you in me. I wantâ"
Sam takes hold of Dean's hips, and he kisses Dean, cutting off his words. The layers of denim are a hindrance, the clanking of their belt buckles as they knock together a taunt, so Dean tears at their belts, at their flies, and he breathes noisily through his nose as Sam steals his breath and they rut together, moaning, grunting, gasping into each other's mouths until they come together, spilling over each other's bellies in a violent outpouring of love and lust and fear and desperation.
After waking up together in Sam's bed, they drive. There's no job to go to, no monster to hunt, but they drive.
Sam is soft, and meek, and seems torn between quiet joy and apprehension. Dean doesn't have a lot of time left. They don't have a lot of time left together, and the space between them is thick with tension.
Thick with a sense of urgency, that there are things they have to do before the clock runs out, and a definite fear that they won't get it done.
And so, when they finally check into a motel at the edge of a town they don't even know the name of, as soon as the door closes behind them they each spring into action.
Dean up-ends his duffel on the floor between the twin beds he requested out of habit. He shoves rolled up jeans and shirts aside and finds the lube he always keeps in there, tosses it on the bed furthest from the door and then reaches for Sam.
But Sam slips out of Dean's arms as he falls to his knees. He looks up at Dean, breathing hard, his hands on Dean's thighs and a soft plea in his eyes.
"Oh, shit," Dean breathes. He's already hard, has been since before they got through the door just from the anticipation of what he knew was going to happen as soon as they were alone. "Yeah," he says, and then unbuckles his belt, unbuttons his fly.
Then his brother's mouth is on his cock, and Dean gasps as Sam swallows him to the hilt. He tangles his fingers in Sam's hair as Sam's mouth slides up and down Dean's shaft.
"Jesus, Sammy," Dean moans. Sam's done this before. There's no fucking way he's never sucked cock before with the way he's going to quicklyâtoo quicklyâmake Dean come. "Sammy, hold up, I don't wannaâ"
Sam pulls off and looks up at Dean with his goddamn pleading puppy dog eyes, the same ones he's been using since before he could speak in sentences when he wanted something, the same ones that always make Dean crumble. "Let me," he says, and then he nuzzles Dean's cock, dragging his cheek over the length. His stubble makes Dean shiver. "I wanna do it right, Dean." This time goes unspoken, but it hangs heavy between them. He puts pressure on Dean's thighs, guiding him backward toward the bed, and then pushes him down to sit on the end of it. Sam pulls Dean's jeans down, and Dean lifts his ass off the mattress so Sam can rid him of them. "Let me do this right."
Sam slips off Dean's boots, casts his jeans aside. Dean's naked from the waist down, and the room isn't cold, but goosebumps spread over his skin. A tinge of vulnerability comes over him. "I need you to take your clothes off, Sam," he whispers, unable to hide the slight quaver in his voice.
Sam immediately starts stripping. Down to nothing. "One word, Dean, and I'll stop. I want you to feel safe."
"I do," Dean says. It's true, except for small, brief moments. Stupid things. He can't be restrained, for one. He doesn't want Sam heavy on his body. He wants Sam on his back, Dean wants to ride his fat cock, he wants to be on top, in control. "I'll tell you," he says. "I'll tell you what I need."
Sam dropped back to the floor as soon as he was free of his clothes. On the floor, on his knees, in front of Dean's spread thighs. He kneels, one hand on either of Dean's knees. "Tell me what you need," he whispers, as he kisses first one knee, and then the other.
Dean reaches back, finds the lube. He bites his lip as he hands it to his brother. "Your fingers," he says. "Slow. I don't wanna come yet."
Sam nods. He pushes Dean's legs apart, lifts his knees, and he slides a slick finger over Dean's tight hole. He leans forward and sucks Dean's cock into his mouth, and it's the perfect distraction while he pushes his fingertip inside.
Dean shivers at the strange, odd intrusion. He looks down into his brothers eyes as Sam holds Dean's cock in his mouth, swirling his tongue over the head.
"The truth," Dean says, his breath hitching as Sam pushes his finger deeper into Dean's body. "I need the truth."
Sam lifts an eyebrow and pulls his mouth off of Dean's cock. Slowly he thrusts his thick finger in and out of Dean's hole.
"How many dudes have you fucked before, Sam? Before me."
The last two words are hard to force out. The night under the bridge doesn't count. The night Dean was cursed and would have died if Sam had not done what he did doesn't count, but Dean wants to be clear. Wants it to be clear that Dean isn't included in the men Sam's been with before now.
"Three," Sam says. His finger slides in and out of Dean's body at a steady pace. "Just three."
Dean's breath comes quicker. His cock aches and his balls are tight. "Did they look like me?" he asks. "Did you fuck them because you wanted me?"
"The first one," Sam whispers. "Looked enough like you that I could pretend. I'm sorry, Dean."
Dean shakes his head. "Don't be." He lies back and he pulls his knees into his chest. "More," he says. Someone taught Sam how to suck cock, how to make Dean ready, and Dean's grateful for that. "I wanna be on top." Dean gasps as he moves his hips, fucking himself on his brother's fingers when Sam slides another in alongside the first. Dean shudders as Sam grazes his prostate. "Fuck, Sammy. Like that." Dean wants to hold Sam to the bed by the shoulders and ride him until he comes inside. "I need to be on top."
Sam puts another one of his fingers inside Dean.
"Fuck," Dean says. It burns, and he can't remember this part from last time, he was out cold, and when he came to he was already full of his brother's cock and it was a fucking nightmare, his first thought was that he was already in hell.
But Dean's not in hell. Not yet. He's in a cheap motel with his brother, and the ceiling tiles are stained and grimy and there's a faint scent of bleach surrounding him. Not brimstone, not sulfur. Bleach.
"Sam," Dean says. "Sam, stop."
Sam immediately pulls his fingers free of Dean's body, too fast, too abruptly, and Dean's body clenches down on nothing, and the aching emptiness is worse than the stretch.
"Tell me what you need," Sam says, pulling away as Dean drops his feet to the floor and sits up. "Just tell me, Dean."
"On the bed." Dean breathes hard, fast. He reaches out to drag Sam by the arm, urging his brother to move faster, because he feels hollow inside. Dean wants to be full but in a way he can control. "On your back, Sam. I have to be on top of you."
Sam's clumsy as he flops onto his back on the narrow bed. He pulls the lube from underneath his butt, and he smears it on his cock.
Dean watches his brother stroke himself, Sam's fist sliding over his thick length. No wonder it felt like Dean was on fire with that inside him. Sam was in a hurry, desperate to save Dean's life and Dean was out cold, Dean's pain was probably pretty low on Sam's list of priorities at the time.
"I'm fucking scared," Dean says, as he throws his leg over Sam's thighs and kneels above him, looking down at Sam, still sliding his hand over his slick cock.
"We don't have to do it," Sam says, propping himself on one elbow and reaching for Dean with his lube-slick hand. Sam's big cock slaps against his belly when he releases it. "We canâ" Sam bites his lower lip and moans. "Like last night." Panting into each other's mouths and rubbing their cocks together until they spill, hot and messy, between their bodies. Sam's slick fingers roll over Dean's nipple, and it immediately tightens into a hard peak, and Dean shudders, his cock jerking.
"Or we can stop," Sam says.
"I don't wanna stop." Dean leans over and he kisses Sam, mouthing clumsily at his brother's lips, tugging at Sam's lower lip with his teeth. He rocks his hips, sliding his cock the length of Sam's, and they slide together on the excess lube coating Sam's dick. "Oh," Dean says. He thrusts against Sam's dick again. "Oh, fuck."
And he feels good. He knows it would be good, and it would be enough, just to come together like this again, and yetâ
"I wanna be full of you," Dean says, and he slides a little more forward, and Sam's cock slips below his balls and the tip drags against Dean's taint, and then the blunt head catches at his hole. "I want you toâ I want to feel you inside me."
Sam grunts and his hips twitch and his cock slips past Dean's hole. "Sorry," Sam gasps. "Dean I'm sorry."
Dean shakes his head, and he puts his hands on Sam's shoulders, pinning him to the mattress. "Don't be sorry," he says, and then he pushes against the head of Sam's cock, and he opens up, burning, stretching, moaning. "Just beâ Oh fuck."
And then the head of Sam's big cock pops inside Dean's hole and he can't think, can't speak, can only moan and shudder as hot sparks spread over the surface of his skin.
"Oh, fuck, Dean," Sam says, reaching up to stroke Dean's face, warm fingertips moving over Dean's cheeks, to drag at his lower lip.
Dean opens his mouth, moans around two of Sam's fingers, and he presses down, taking another inch of his brother's cock inside him. Sam is fucking huge, his cock is thicker than he remembers, but he was out cold for this bit, and when he came to he was dosed on oxy and even then Dean's insides were on fire.
But he was fighting it then. He fought Sam the whole way. He didn't want it.
But now he wants it. And it's all twisted and it's all so messed up, but they've never been fucking normal, what a fucking surprise they end up like this.
"I want you in me," Dean mumbles around Sam's fingers on his tongue, and he pushes down again, and Sam stretches him open from the inside, and, oh god, he can feel Sam's big cock right up inside him. "I want it, Sammy." He slides down Sam's cock, inch by inch, pushing, writhing, moaning and sucking on Sam's fingers.
Until he's fully seated in Sam's lap. Until Sam's cock is all the way inside him. And he can't breathe. And he can't speak. And the only thing he can think about is how full he is, how Sam's warming him from the inside. About how Sam's cock throbs with the beat of both their hearts.
"I got you," Sam says, stroking the small of Dean's back, his sides, his belly. His hands slide up to brush his fingers over Dean's nipples, pulling them both into hard, throbbing peaks. "I've got you, Dean. You okay?"
Sam's so heavy inside him. So thick. So long. Dean manages a stilted nod and then rolls his hips. Sam's cock moves inside him. They both moan. Dean leans forward, seeking out his brother's mouth.
But all he can do is bite at Sam's lower lip. He pulls at it, breathing hard as he moves on his brother's cock. He rocks his hips. Forward. Back. Forward. Back. It's all in slow-mo, like time has slowed and the air in the shabby room is thick and warm.
With every movement of Dean's hips they each let out a soft grunt of pleasure. Dean breathes against his brother's mouth, hot, heavy puffs of air.
And then Sam lifts his chin and takes possession of Dean's mouth. Dips his tongue between Dean's lips, licking, sucking. He puts his hands on Dean's hips, and they feel tense, shaking like he's holding back.
"Do it," Dean rasps. "Do it, Sam. Fuck me."
Sam moans and arches beneath Dean's body. His fingers press bruises into Dean's hips. His hands clench, and release, and clench again. And then he growls, and he rolls up into Dean's body, matching Dean's movements until they're moving in sync, and they both start to move faster, harder, together.
Dean has a bad habit of dwelling on things in his past. He's not having flashbacks anymore, which is great, but he still remembers. Compares.
And maybe it was a demon inside him that night beneath the bridge, because he can't compare. It feels like the first time, like it's the first time he's had a man inside him, like Sam is breaking new ground. Here, now.
Perhaps Dean is so overwhelmed with the fullness, the feeling of being stuffed like a thanksgiving turkey, with the zing and shivers that consume him, that it simply blocks it all out.
Or maybe it's because that night wasn't sex. Oh, it was enough sex to break the curse or Dean would be dead by now, but it wasn't sex, not really.
It was desperation.
There's a little bit of desperation in what they're doing now, of course. Dean will be dead soon. The hellhounds will come, and Dean will be gone, but Sam will go on.
"Promise me," Dean says, sweaty, breathless. "You'll live." He grinds his insides against his brother's cock, grinds his own cock against Sam's taut stomach. "Go have a life, Sam. For me."
And then there's salt on Dean's lips. His brother's tears on his tongue. Sam makes a sound, pitched high, a sound of anguish and loss and grief. "I promise," Sam says.
Relief flows through Dean, and he fucks himself on Sam's cock, rubs himself off against Sam's stomach. "Come inside me," he breathes, and he forgets all about the first time. It's gone. Wiped away. "I want to feel you coming inside me, Sammy."
Sam's hands tighten on Dean's hips, and he trusts up into Dean's body, hard and deep. "Touch yourself," he says, breathless, panting. "Come for me, Dean. I wanna feel it."
Dean slips his hand between them, wraps it around himself and starts to stroke. He straightens, and he fucks himself onto his brother's cock in just the right way that Sam's cockhead grazes over Dean's prostate with every thrust. Dean shudders and cries out, and in what seems like no time at all he's coming, spilling over Sam's belly, hot, milky fluid splashing down on Sam's skin.
Dean's still clenching around Sam's cock when Sam starts to come too, groaning and hips jerking and then finally, going still.
Both of them are still but for their gasping for air, panting for breath. Dean lays his head on his brother's chest and moans when Sam's softening cock slips out of him, followed by a trickle of warm fluid.
He's wet with sweat and come, but he's warm. It's not mud. It's not rain. It's not water pouring down from the road and offering escape in a torrent to wash him away.
They're shacked up in the same shitty motel in the middle of nowhere for almost a week before they get the worst of it out of their system.
And then they get in the car and drive.
"I'm not just gonna wait for them to come get me, Sam," Dean says. "I'm gonna go out hunting."
Dean's going to take out as many monsters as he possibly can before his time is up. The clock ticks down, but they've got a job to do.