Chapter 2

Awkward doesn't even cover it. They're as clean as they can get, they're both more or less properly dressed, but Sam hasn't spoken a word since they finished.

It's getting dark again. Dean can barely see his hand in front of his face.

He clings to the bars in silence and strains his ears to listen for footsteps. There's nothing but the cracking of rock and the trickle of water.

Then he hears them. Distant. Far away, but there all the same.

"Sammy," he hisses. "He's coming."

Sam freezes. Then he bends over, grabs the discarded blade from the floor of their cell, tucks it into his sleeve, and approaches the bars, taking his place next to Dean.

They wait in silence as the footsteps come closer, closer, and finally, the witch comes into view.

He's smiling like the Cheshire cat.

"Fuck," Dean mutters, because that doesn't bode well.

"You got what you wanted," Sam spits. "Now let us the fuck out of here."

"I did, didn't I?" the witch says. He seems different than before. More pleased with himself, inordinately smug. "Of course I'll let you out, Sam. After all, you did give me exactly what I needed."

The witch looks down at himself then, holds his arms away from his body, clenches his fists as though he's admiring himself.

It's weird.

"Go on then," Dean says, rattling the door of his cage. "Unlock the damn door."

"Alas," the witch says, pulling out his pockets. "I don't have the key."

Sam throws himself at the bars. "You bastard. Let us the fuck out."

The witch doesn't flinch. He glances at Dean. "Beautiful when he's angry, isn't he?"

"You're a sick fuck, you know that?" Dean says.

The witch beams and approaches the bars.

Dean takes a wary step back.

"I'm not going to hurt you, Dean." The witch puts his hands on the bars and gives the door a swift tug, and it breaks right off it's hinges. He tosses it behind him like it weighs nothing, but Dean checked, it's solid steel.

Dean hangs back, but Sam knocks him out of the way, and he's already got the knife in his hand, and he gets a grip on the witch and he's about to plunge the knife into the witch's heart—

The witch disappears. Poof. Gone. Sam's momentum carries him forward and he ends up sprawled on his hands and knees.

Dean rolls his eyes. "Come on, Sammy," he says, pulling Sam to his feet. "Let's get the fuck out of here."

He doesn't wait for his brother, just starts walking in the direction of the light.

---

It's a long dark corridor, with loose stone on the floor and an arched ceiling. Dean can almost touch the roof, he's pretty sure Sam could if he could be bothered, but Sam still seems tense.

Hell, Sam should be tense, the shit they've both been through, but for some reason Dean's not.

He's relaxed, even. Like he usually is after good sex. His brain, his body, has decided Sam was just another good lay. Fantastic, even.

Dean doesn’t bother trying to convince himself that Sam somehow feels the same way.

The light gets brighter, slowly, as they move along the tunnel, until finally, the exit appears around a bend.

"Look, Sammy," Dean says. "The light at the end of the tunnel."

Sam doesn't so much as groan in response, but he quickens his pace. His strides are longer than Dean's, and Dean has to skip to catch up to him before Sam beats him out of the tunnel and into the light.

They exit the tunnel into a roughly circular area, with more openings like the one they just came out of spaced around it.

In the center, there is the evidence of some kind of ritual. Candles, sputtering as they burn down to nothing, copper bowls at the ordinances, entrails, sigils drawn on the floor in what looks like blood...

And there's a body, half-covered with a ragged piece of cloth.

Dean hurries over to check, though he doesn't hold much hope. He can't find a pulse, so he turns the dead man over to see if he can find I.D.

He stumbles back when he sees the face.

"It's the witch," Dean says. "Who the hell let us out of the cage?"

"The demon he summoned."

"That wasn't a meat suit, Sammy," Dean says. "The meat suit is right here."

"Then it's something else. Something that can assume another form. Like a ghoul, they look like the last person they ate. Maybe this guy looks like the last person he kills."

Dean drags the piece of cloth off the witch's body. "Or the last person he fucks."

The witch's pants are around his knees. There's blood. A lot of blood.

Sam stumbles away and vomits.

Dean covers the man up again. "Well that's karma for you."

---

One of the tunnels leads them out the side of a mountain. The moon tells them it's around midnight, and the distant sound of vehicles send them hiking through dense woods toward civilization.

It's dawn before they get back to town—thankfully the same town where they left the car.

They both fall into their beds in the motel, and sleep, because they've still got bones to burn and they can't dig them up until dark.

When Dean wakes, the sun is setting and Sam isn't in his bed. The car keys aren't on the bedside table and Dean's just about to start freaking out when he hears the impala pull in outside.

"You scared the shit outta me," he says when Sam appears in the doorway, with a carrier bag from the gas station and two cups of coffee.

"You thought I'd left?"

"Wouldn't blame you." Dean rummages in the bag, pleased to find a slice of pie and a bottle of whiskey. "You get anything for yourself?"

"The booze is for me," Sam says. "After this job's done, I'm planning on getting drunk."

"Not that I blame you, but, where's mine?"

"I got you pie."

Dean rolls his eyes. "We get these bones burned, then we'll find a bar."

"I'm not feeling even a little bit sociable, Dean. I thought we could get as far away from here as possible. You can drive."

"And you'll drink?"

"That's the idea."

"Where are we going?"

"Anywhere. Once we're settled, we can start tracking it."

"It's not our problem, Sammy."

"It's my problem. It's my fault it's here."

"No, it's not. The witch—"

"I could have stopped it."

"How, Sam? How? You barely slowed down long enough to let me get my fucking jeans off, and if you hadn't done that, I might have looked like that guy back there—"

Sam goes pale, like he might hurl again.

"Yeah," Dean says. "So let it go, okay? I'm fine, I'm not hurt, and that's a good thing—"

"You didn't have to go through with it." Sam drops his eyes, and all the anger that has been leaking out of him since it happened just melts away, and now all he puts out is shame.

"What, you think that was hard?" Dean says. "Shit, Sammy, that wasn't hard." He should shut up, but it just comes tumbling out. "Location could've been better, but that was so far from the worst sex I've ever had it's not even on the same planet."

Sam looks up, and his eyes are wide with shock.

"Yeah," Dean says. "I said it. Sex. We had sex. But you know what it wasn't? Rape. What we did, what happened between us? That was sex, and it was good sex, and you can stop beating yourself up over it, because you weren't the first, you didn't take my virtue, and I knew exactly what I was doing."

A vein in Sam's temple twitches. "You've slept with guys?"

Dean shrugs. "You gonna bail?"

"I'm not leaving."

"Good. Right." Dean checks the light. "Now, can we go burn some bones?"

---

They're on the road for half an hour when Dean realizes Sam's halfway through the bottle already. "Slow down," he says. "I'm not stopping every ten minutes just so you can piss once that catches up with you."

"I liked it," Sam says. The booze is already catching up with him, from the slur to his words.

Dean doesn’t have to ask Sam what he means. "That's good," he says. "It was good for you. It was good for me. We don't gotta think too hard about the circumstances."

"But the ritual worked," Sam says. "It needed a profane act, and it worked."

"We're brothers," Dean says. "Sounds pretty profane to me."

"Incest isn't profane." Sam tips the bottle back and it glugs as whiskey pours down his throat. "Just ill-advised."

Dean cringes. He's been trying very hard not to think that word.

"And we're grown consenting adults. Consent." Sam spaces the syllables out, like he's tasting it. "Consent is important, Dean."

"Yes, it is, Sammy. What are you getting at?"

"You taught me that."

It's true. John was never going to give Sam the talk. Dean had to do it. Taught him about consent and condoms and all that shit when Sam was way overdue because that's one hell of an awkward conversation to have with your 14yo brother when you're barely doing it yourself.

"You couldn't possibly consent when you didn't have all the facts."

"What?"

"You broke the curse."

"It was gonna break either way Sam, once you got what you needed. I just made sure you got it without tearing me apart."

"You always look out for me. But I never look out for you."

"Okay,that's enough." Dean snatches the bottle out of Sam's hand as he tips it up again, and he pulls over onto the shoulder, because he can't drive and wrestle the cap off Sam to close the bottle and hide it in the trunk. "I'm cutting you off."

As soon as the car stops, Sam pops open the door and rolls out. Dean finds the cap on the seat where Sam left it and caps the bottle, stashing it under his seat for safe keeping.

Then he climbs out of the car to make sure Sam doesn't do anything stupid.

Sam does something stupid.

He pushes Dean up against the car, and he presses his mouth to Dean's in a sloppy, drunken kiss. "I wanted to do that," he says. "I wanted to kiss you."

Dean shoves Sam away and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. "Well, you've done it. Now can we get back on the road?"

"You can't trust me," Sam says. "I won't look out for you."

"Then it's a good thing I can look out for the both of us." Dean opens the passenger side door and manhandles his drunk brother back into the car. "Now do us both a favor and sleep until the next town. Because that's where we're stopping."

---

The motel manager in the next town is bleary-eyed and wrapping a threadbare robe around his ample belly when he lets Dean into the office.

"Sorry about the hour," Dean says. He glances at the clock on the wall behind the desk. It's half two, but feels closer to dawn. Sam gets chatty when he's drunk, and he just wouldn't shut up. "My traveling companion needs somewhere to sleep it off, know what I mean?"

The manager glances through the office window at Sam, leaning against the car, clearly drunk, and grunts. He mutters something about a surcharge for vomit and slides a key across the desk in exchange for Dean's credit card.

"Sleep well," Dean says as he pulls the door closed behind him. "Come on, Sammy. Get back in the car, I gotta park it."

---

Dean turns the key in the lock and swings the door open. He feels inside for the light as he turns to pull Sam in with him, and shuts and locks it behind him.

Then he turns back to the room. "Oh, for fucks sake," he says, because there's one king size bed and no couch.

"We're sharing?" Sam asks. "Do you think that's a good idea?"

"Not with you in your current state it isn't. Goddamn it." He thinks briefly about waking the manager up again to change rooms, but he doesn't like his chances. Sure, it would serve the guy right for making assumptions, but to be quite honest, the guy could just as easily turf them out, and there's not another motel for miles. "Keep your hands to yourself, and we'll be fine."

Sam starts stripping off, tripping over his jeans as he makes his way to the bed. "We haven't shared since we were kids, remember?"

They were teenagers. Too old to be sharing really, but it never seemed like that big of a deal.

If this had happened last week it might not have seemed like a big deal, either, but things are different now.

Now Dean knows what it feels like to have his brother inside him.

Sam is drunk, and booze drags things out that are simmering under the surface.

Sam falls on top of the blankets, and within moments, he's snoring.

Dean leaves him there while he slips beneath the sheets on the other side of the bed. At least there's a barrier between them. It's as good as separate beds.

---

Dean wakes to the sound of birdsong. He's vaguely aware of another body beside him, warm bare skin and hot breath on the back of his neck and strong arms holding him close and a hard cock pressed against his ass.

He swims, barely conscious, in a smooth, fuzzy comfortable space before it hits him that it's not some guy he picked up, it's his brother.

He tries to slither out without waking Sam, but it's not to be.

"Don't go," Sam says. "I don't want to wake up."

"You're already awake," Dean says, and shoves Sam's limbs away from him. "What gives?"

"I woke up cold," Sam says. His eyes are still closed. "My head hurts."

"Serves you right."

Sam sighs, and he slowly opens his eyes. "Sorry about last night."

"What for? Molesting me on the side of the road or molesting me in my sleep?"

Sam cringes, and he looks like he did yesterday again, ashamed.

Dean sighs. "I'm yanking your chain, Sammy. We're good, okay?" It seems like that's all Dean's been saying to his brother since they got out of that cell. "Come on. Get up and get showered. We gotta get back on the road. Hole up somewhere, remember? Figure out what that dead witch raised up so we can gank it."

Sam nods. Self-disgust still sits heavy on him, but it's eased at least a little. The hunt was Sam's idea, anyway. Giving him that is the least Dean can do for him right now, and giving him something to research should keep his mind off other things.

---

Dean was right about Sam needing something to research, because when he gets out of the shower he finds Sam sitting on the bed with his laptop.

"Thought we were hitting the road," Dean says.

"Yeah, I know," Sam says, and he's weirdly animated, in fact, this is the best mood he's been in since they got yanked out of that graveyard. "But I think I know what we're dealing with."

He turns the laptop around so Dean can see the screen, but it's just a whole bunch of tiny text, so Dean lifts an eyebrow.

Sam rolls his eyes. "You've hunted succubus before, right?"

"Yeah." Dean shrugs. "A few years back. Messy."

"Messy like fucked to death messy?"

Dean pulls a face, remembering the state of the dead witch back in the cave. "Yeah, but not like that. Tends to be more of a 'over a long period of time' thing with them. Anyway, Sammy. That thing was a dude."

That's when Sam gets excited. "So get this. Succubus, Incubus—not the band, Dean, the monster—they're the same thing. Succubi, Incubi, they come from the latin, succubare, incubare, respectively 'to lie beneath', 'to lie upon', but should more accurately be named Concubi or Concubus from the latin concubare, 'to lie with'."

"What?" says Dean.

"Dean. They're the same monster. Concubi take the form of whatever their victim finds attractive, their dream sexual partner—"

"The perfect lay?"

"Yeah. If their victim likes women, succubus. If their victim likes men, incubus. See what I'm getting at?"

"So our witch wanted to fuck himself?" Dean gives Sam a look of disbelief.

"He didn't come off like a raging narcissist to you?"

Dean lifts one shoulder in a shrug of concession. "So we're hunting a—what did you call it? Concubine?"

"Concubus."

"Isn't that another name for a hooker?"

Apparently not, because Sam just sighs. "So we know what we're hunting. Still gotta figure out how to track it." Sam pulls the laptop back onto his thighs and starts tapping at the keyboard.

"Sam? Are we checking out, or not?"

Sam looks up. "Oh. Um. What if we end up driving away from it? We started in the same spot he did, we could end up going in the opposite direction."

Dean would like to give the bed a pointed glance, but it would likely fall flat considering Sam's sitting in the middle of it, so he doesn't bother.

Instead, he grabs his wallet and heads for the door. "I'll let the manager know," he says. "And get us a proper fucking room."

---

If they were gonna stick around, Dean figured, they were gonna need a kitchenette, and a proper table—Sam can't be sitting on the bed all the time with the laptop—and two goddamn beds, because if he's gonna end up in bed with his brother, it's gonna be because they both decide that's how things are gonna go, not because there's no other option.

So there are two beds, and there's a fridge with beer in it, and Dean's duffel is on the end of the bed closest to the door, and the weapons bag has been kicked under it...and Sam's still sitting on his goddamn bed with the laptop.

"Comfy?" Dean says as he opens a beer.

"No." Sam closes the laptop and puts it aside. "Near as I can figure, we're just gonna have to hope we get wind of it. I can't find any lore on concubi sign."

"That's cos there isn't any. There wasn't when I hunted that succubus either. Just kinda...stumbled across it."

"How did you kill it?"

"Pretty standard, silver blade to the heart. It's catching them that's the challenge. They're slippery suckers. Gotta get 'em mid-fuck, it's the only time they're preoccupied."

"We've gotta find it, Dean."

Sam's really, really intense about this one. More than usual, almost as bad as he got over the yellow-eyed demon. Obsessed. Like Dad.

"I get that you want to get the job done, Sammy. But we can't get too wound up about this thing. It's not on us, remember? The witch is to blame for whatever it does, whoever it hurts. We gotta be professional, or we'll miss our shot."

Sam's face shifts, twists again, and Dean could kick himself. He really doesn't want to have to give Sam his 'we're good' speech again.

"You haven't been listening to me," Sam says. His words are clipped, hissed from between clenched teeth. "It's my fault the ritual worked. No, it's not on us. It's on me. Me, Dean. I'm the one who gave it what it wanted."

"Why, because you're the one the witch pricked with his sex needle?"

"No. Because I'm the one who had sex with you when you couldn't possibly consent." Sam stares at Dean, unblinking. Waiting.

Sam was muttering something about consent last night. Dean didn't listen to much of it, Sam's a chatty drunk, and Dean tends to tune it out.

Dean shakes his head. "You got that twisted, Sammy. I knew exactly what I was doing, and I didn't do it to stop the ritual, I did it to make sure I didn't end up like that witch back there. You're the one who had no say in the matter. If anything, I took advantage of you. You couldn't say no."

"I could have," Sam says. "But I didn't."

Dean sighs and looks up at the ceiling, as though there's a deity up there somewhere that could save him from this, but as expected, no help comes. "What are you saying? Because it sure seemed like you were hell-bent on raping your big brother at the time."

"I was," Sam says. "The curse took, and I had to fuck something warm. And I was going to do anything to do that, anything. I was prepared to bash your head against the floor if you fought me."

"Then what the hell are you on about, Sammy?"

"You broke the curse," Sam says, so quietly it's almost a whisper. "You broke the curse before I ever got inside you, but I didn't say anything, I didn't stop it, because I wanted it. I let you believe I wasn't in control because I wanted to fuck my brother."

Dean shakes his head. "I don't understand." He tries to pick through each moment from that night, to see if he ignored any signs, but he can't find any cues that what Sam is saying might be true. "How could I have possibly broken the curse if I hadn't given you what you needed yet?"

"Soon as I realized you were going to do it, I felt it go. It just...broke. Probably knew it was going to get what it needed, I didn't need to be cursed anymore, there was no point to wasting the energy because you were just going to give it to me."

"Maybe?" Perhaps it makes a kind of sense, but the thought that spells and curses might be sentient disturbs Dean more than many things he's seen over the years. "But that doesn't make the incubus your fault, Sam. None of this is—"

"I didn't give you the option to back out. You didn't consent to sex with me under those circumstances. The ritual got the rape it required and it's my fault."

Fuck."Sammy." Dean reaches out, but Sam flinches away. That's where the shame is coming from, Sam was conscious. Dean would be—should have been—tearing himself up over the same thing, but he hasn't. Maybe that proves that Sam's the better man. "Then we're even," Dean says. "Ever think that maybe I did it because I wanted to fuck my brother? I could have bashed your head in too, you know. I didn't. I went for the sex. With my brother. Because when was I ever going to get the chance again?"

Sam blinks at him in disbelief.

"I forgive you, if you'll forgive me. If we can't get past this we'll both be off our game and we'll end up dead or worse."

"You forgive me?"

"Course, Sammy. It was a clusterfuck, for sure. But I mean it when I say we're good. And we've got a job to do. However he got out, we gotta gank the sex demon, because you're right, it's out because of us."

"And then?"

Dean sits down on the edge of his brothers bed. Some instinct needles at him, a heat that burns his lips and makes him think only Sam's skin might soothe it.

But Sam was right. He was drunk, but he was right. This is ill-advised. It's insane, and it's wrong.

But fuck if it doesn't feel right. What happened in the cave, in that cell, they just...fit. They moved together like one being, like they each knew exactly what the other needed—

The air is thick, heavy. It's difficult to breathe. He's hard. So fucking hard.

It's like they can read each others minds. Sam won't look away, and Dean can't. Somehow Dean knows Sam's thinking the exact thing he is, but neither of them move.

Heavy breaths. The aborted tick of the broken alarm clock between the beds. Distant traffic.

"And then?" Sam repeats.

Silence stretches out between them. The air between them is a physical thing.

"We get past this," Dean says. "First we gotta get past this."

The monster was inspired by a social media post I found on pinterest, link unknown.