Let Mercy Come
Sep. 19th, 2011 07:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
grianchlochTitle: Let Mercy Come
Link to art: The Art
Characters: Dean/Soulless Sam, Dean/Soulful Sam
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 13,905
Beta:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
seleneheart
Disclaimer: Sadly, they aren't mine, I'm just playing with them for a while.
Notes: Written for the Sam Dean Mini Bang. Art byyanyann. The title comes from Linkin Park's "What I've Done", and the fic was inspired by the lyrics which are at the end of the story.
Warnings: Manipulative Sam. Dub con in part two.
Summary: Sam knows he’s not the same as before he jumped into the pit, but he doesn’t care. When Dean joins him on the road again, he realizes Sam is different too, but he does care. As the truth comes out, their relationship unravels. When Sam gets his soul back, he finds himself rebuilding what he had with his brother and dealing with fragments of broken memories that only give him half the story.
Let Mercy Come
Dean watches helplessly as Sam falls back into the cage, pulling Adam with him. Everything he is, everything he lives for is swallowed up as the earth closes behind them and he’s left alone. Slowly, his body screaming for him to stay still, he crawls to the spot where the key to the cage lies cooling on the grass. He reaches down, fingers brushing over heated metal, his head hanging low.
It doesn’t matter what he promised Sam, he hasn’t got the strength or the will to move, to go on. Maybe, he wonders as his mind drifts, if he sits here long enough, the ground will open up and swallow him too, then he won’t have to go on, won’t have to exist without Sam.
Everything hurts, every cell in his body aches and his mind is so full of grief that he doesn’t understand how he’s still conscious. Sam’s gone … Sam, Bobby, Castiel and a short list of everyone Dean’s ever cared about. They’re all gone, and he’s completely alone.
But then a shadow falls across him. He looks up, startled to find Castiel standing over him, gazing down and reaching out a healing hand. Dean’s face is restored in a heartbeat, but his soul aches, feels like it’s been torn in two. Nothing can heal the savage wound deep in his chest where Sam was ripped from him. His heart shattered as his brother fell and despite Lisa caring for him and Ben becoming like a son to him in the months that follow, nothing can put his heart back together again.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Sam wakes in an empty field. The damp grass tickles his neck, and the early morning dew soaks into his clothes. He blinks and sits up, looking around. There’s no sign of the cemetery, no sign of Dean or the door to the cage. He’s in a different place, one he doesn’t recognize, but he’s fairly certain it isn’t the cage. He assesses his surroundings as he gets to his feet.
It doesn’t take him long to get moving. He finds a car, hotwires it, and drives towards the place he expects Dean will be. As he drives, it hits him that he doesn’t have any memories of the cage after he fell. Either he’s repressing everything that happened, or he didn’t spend any time down there. He stops at the next gas station, and checks out the date of the papers on the news stand while he buys as many snacks as the money in his wallet will allow. He’s starving, even though it turns out he’s only been gone for two days.
He feels … different. When he thinks back on the events in the cemetery, he knows that it caused him incredible anguish, to see Lucifer beat Dean as he did, to feel Dean’s bones shatter beneath his fists. He knows it was the need to protect his brother that enabled him to take control back from the devil and jump into the cage.
But now he sees it with a cool detachment, as if it had happened to someone else, or played out in front of him on a movie screen. He has the memories, but can’t associate them with the anguish he went through. It should still hurt, but it doesn’t. The feelings aren’t his anymore.
Sam eases his foot back off the gas, and lets the stolen car slow until it stops by the side of the road. He gets out and sits on the hood, as he’s done so many times with Dean at his side. But even those memories don’t come with how it felt to sit side by side with his brother and listen to him pour out his heart. He can remember times when they did that, he can remember the pain he felt when Dean finally broke down and told him about hell, but the detachment allows him to view the memories without the added burden of emotions.
He begins to question why he’s heading towards Dean. He told his brother to build a life without him, and if he’s started to do that, then he doesn’t need Sam. He’ll have a new family to care for and who care for him.
Sam gets back in the car, and heads to Lisa’s anyway. He’s curious as to whether Dean kept his promise. He stands under a streetlight, gazing through the window at the domestic scene playing out in the house. Lisa is attentive, serving food and looking fondly at Dean. That’s what he’s always wanted, Sam muses, so he can have it.
He turns and gets back into the car, heading towards South Dakota. Bobby has the resources he needs to get back into hunting on his own.
Sam doesn’t see Dean again for a year.
~*~*~*~*~*~
He kills his first civilian three weeks after he gets back. It brings it home to him just how different he is. She's terrified, eyes pleading with him to save her, but she’s in the way of his objective. The demon holds her close, triumph in its borrowed eyes. Hunters are the good guys, they save people, they don't sacrifice them, they keep them alive.
Only this hunter is different.
As the demon grins, Sam's eyes narrow. He doesn't think, he simply takes the most logical course of action to get the job done. He shoots the girl, removing any leverage the demon has over him, then takes advantage of the shock his actions cause, and dispatches the demon.
He checks both bodies for signs of life, but as he expects, there are none. He casts his eyes over the scene, making sure he hasn't left any evidence of his presence behind, and leaves.
He knows that before he fell, he wouldn't have sacrificed a civilian to get the job done. He would have put the gun down, hoping that the demon would then release the girl, then he would have made sure she was safe before resuming his pursuit. Before he fell, he would be tortured over what he's just done. Now, he's not. He doesn't feel anything.
Right then, Sam decides that this new way is better, it makes him more efficient. He has no feelings or emotions to hold him back. That can only be a good thing in a life lived hunting monsters. There will always be collateral damage, and now he can accept that without the pain and hurt that always came with not being able to save civilians.
He thinks of Madison. He remembers how crushed he'd been, having to kill her, how his heart broke in two, and how Dean was there to help him patch it back together again. But the pain had lingered. It had impaired his ability to do the job, had distracted him.
Now, he doesn't have that problem. He can be a better hunter without the distractions.
Sam wonders if his two days in hell resulted in post traumatic stress, and that's why he can't feel anything anymore. But the reason for it doesn't concern him. He's better off as he is. He knows Dean wouldn't understand, so when Samuel suggests they bring Dean in to work with them, Sam talks him out of it.
"He's got a family now, and he's out of the life. Not many hunters get to do that."
Samuel agrees, shades of his own lost family haunting his eyes.
That's the point Sam gets it. He can use the fact that everyone else does feel emotions to his own advantage. He becomes a master manipulator, he takes the feelings and emotions of others and twists them to suit his own purposes.
He doesn't tell Samuel that the real reason he doesn't want Dean hunting with them is that he will question Sam's way of working. Samuel and the rest of the Campbell clan have never hunted with Sam before, so they won't know the difference. They know him by reputation, which is as a badass hunter. They never saw the side of him that Dean did, so as far as they are concerned, this is how Sam's always been.
A month is long enough for him to stop wondering why he is how he is. After a year, it's who he is. He sees Samuel looking at him sometimes, mainly after a particular brutal hunt where Sam didn't hesitate to do what needed to be done. Sam doesn't consider trying to give him an explanation. There's no need. If Samuel doesn't like the way Sam is, Sam doesn't care. It's not important how his grandfather sees him. The only important thing is the job, the hunt.
Sam's shocked when it turns out that something else is important.
Dean.
The djinn's children target Sam first, filling his head with images of Ruby taunting him. She flicks her dark hair back and smirks, reminding him how he chose her over Dean, wrapping her hands around his throat, just as he’d done to Dean as they fought before Lucifer rose.
There’s a sharp pain in his chest, and his world goes black. When he wakes, Samuel explains about the antidote, and the crew swings into action and goes after the djinn. It doesn’t take long to realize that they are, in turn, going after Dean.
Even as he’s putting his foot on the gas, he’s wondering why the need to protect his brother is so strong. They were more than brothers, he knows that. He has memories of them fucking, memories of them sleeping in the same bed together, but that was then. Now, Sam acknowledges that Dean was a good lay, but he doesn’t love him. Sam accepts that he isn’t capable of love, any more then he’s capable of hate. Even the things he hunts, he doesn’t hate them. He does his job. He knows that they are the bad guys, so he takes them out, or takes them down and lets Samuel do whatever he’s doing with them.
Sam puts his thoughts aside, needing to focus on the job at hand. He turns his perfectly honed hunter’s skills on tracking the djinn but they move fast, and Dean is infected by the time he gets there. He takes an unconscious Dean back to the Campbell's base with him, and waits while he sleeps off the after effects of the antidote, watching his brother.
He decides there and then that he wants Dean hunting with him again. It makes sense. They work well together. For all that the Campbells are good hunters, no-one is as good as his brother. And he'll be even better, Sam reasons, once he accepts that Sam can take care of himself. And once he gets back into shape and back in the game.
As Sam watches, Dean shifts on the cot he's lying on, and his eyelids crack open. He sits up and looks at Sam, shock in his eyes.
“Hey Dean.”
~*~*~*~*~*~
It doesn’t take long.
One moment Dean’s opening his eyes, looking at the brother he hasn’t seen for a year, wondering if he’s dead, and joined him in their shared heaven. The next, he’s across the room, hugging him tight. But in another heartbeat, he realizes that Sam hasn’t hugged him back with the same intensity. Not that Dean would ever mention that, but Sam? He’s a hugger when he gets the chance, fit to crush Dean’s ribs if it follows one of them dying or coming back from hell.
Then Dean finds out he’s been back for a year, and his world tilts off its axis. Even when the hits keep coming and he finds out about the Campbells and their grand daddy, it’s the first revelation that sticks with him.
Sam’s been back a whole year, and never thought to contact him.
Sam’s right. He has something with Lisa, he’s been building something, but he’s back to square one after Sam leaves in his douche of a car. Back to feeling lost and out of place.
Sam’s back, but the reunion he’s occasionally let himself picture when he’s thought of Sam over the year, fizzled and died in the face of Sam’s cool demeanor. Sam’s back, but he’s not Dean’s Sam anymore, not the way he used to be.
Dean drags his feet as he walks back into the house he’s called home for a year, and finds the whiskey. Some things aren’t meant to be faced sober.
It’s inevitable that Dean will follow Sam back into hunting. He tries to let it go, but even Lisa sees the need in him to be with Sam.
~*~*~*~*~*~
The first time Sam touches him again is the night before Castiel shows up after a year of doing whatever angels do when there’s war in heaven.
Sam books them into the motel, all lazy smiles at the girl behind the desk. Dean bites back a stupid comment, that it’s his job to book them in and flirt with the receptionist. Instead, he watches as the young blonde flutters her eyelashes at Sam, and makes it perfectly clear that he could have her right there on the desk if he wants.
Dean shifts uncomfortably, rolling his eyes as she blatantly offers Sam her number and he takes it with a grin. Then Sam’s off down the corridor towards the stairs, Dean trailing behind him and wondering what the hell just happened. Had the universe declared it to be opposite day or something, because Dean’s sure it’s usually him that turns the charm on, and Sam that rolls his eyes.
It makes Dean uneasy. Sam’s lived for a year without a big brother around. He’s changed, that’s obvious, exuding arrogance more than confidence. Dean wonders if it’s a natural progression, without someone around to keep him grounded. Keep him human. That’s something Dean stuffs back into the darker corners of his mind.
Sam’s back. Yes, he’s changed, but he’s still Sam, still Dean’s pain in the ass little brother.
An hour later, fresh from the shower, Sam reaches for him. Dean’s skin tingles as Sam’s hand closes around his shoulder.
Used to be, when Sam kissed him, there’d be warmth in his eyes, an eager need to be closer to Dean, sometimes even guilt, that he craved his brother in ways he shouldn’t. Dean could always soothe that away, with soft words whispered against Sam’s neck, have him panting and gasping Dean’s name as he came.
This time, Sam’s eyes are full of cold, calculating lust. While Dean’s still processing the fact that Sam still wants him like this, Sam’s pushing him backwards until he meets the wall behind him. Dean wants Sam too, he’s missed the way they were together, strong, hard, not having to worry about hurting each other when things got rough. That’s something he’s only ever had with Sam, only ever wanted with Sam, so when Sam turns him around and yanks his jeans down, Dean whimpers and luxuriates in the way Sam’s strong hands grip his wrists as he presses his dick against Dean’s ass.
Sam’s long, slicked fingers probe deep inside him, opening him up in more ways than one. It’s never been just sex with Sam. If Dean wanted sex, he could go to a bar and pick up a girl, show her a very good time, and come away sated and relaxed. But Sam has the power to shatter Dean into pieces, force him to bare his soul every time Sam’s hands move on his body, pushing him to break apart and let him in.
The first time Sam fucked him, he lay in the dark afterwards, chest heaving, staring wide eyed at the ceiling. His body was wrung out, sated in a way it hadn’t been before, boneless and liquid, but his mind was racing, panicked, freaking the hell out. Sam wandered back from the bathroom, still naked, but he didn’t lie down on the opposite bed as Dean expected him to, he lay down next to Dean and kissed his shoulder.
Dean let out a strangled burst of laughter, which seemed appropriate as he was tipping over the edge right into hysteria.
“Dean.” Sam’s voice was sleepy as his fingers drew circles on Dean’s hip.
Dean pushed himself up on his elbows, looking round to locate his jeans.
“Where’re you going?” Sam asked, puzzled.
“I, um, I gotta … go.”
“Go where?”
“Someplace …”
Sam took hold of his arm and pulled him back down to the bed, wrapping his arms around him and effectively trapping him.
“Don’t freak on me, man, not now.”
Sam nuzzled Dean’s neck, mouthing over the soft skin behind his ear, and Dean slowly relaxed, falling asleep with Sam still holding him close.
Dean still remembers exactly how that felt.
So now in one way, Dean’s got Sam back, but when he wakes up, Sam’s not plastered to his back or curled against his chest. He’s sitting at the table staring intently at the laptop screen and sipping on a coffee. There’s another coffee on the table, and enough donuts for both of them, but Dean’s missing the way he’d wake all wrapped up in Sam. Lazy, morning breath kisses and stretching together, untangling limbs and tangling them together again, rocking against each other, mouths roaming over skin until they came messily, sticky and sweet.
Dean pushes himself up onto his elbows and watches Sam. He knows they’ve been apart for over a year, that habits change, but it’s more than that.
“Hey,” Sam looks over at him. “I got you coffee and breakfast.”
“Thanks. How long you been up?”
“A while. You should shower, we need to get going.” Sam looks back down at the laptop.
Dean grunts and gets up, snagging a donut and his coffee and wolfing them down before he heads to the bathroom to get the shower going. He’s basically doing as he’s told and that isn’t how they work. The bitch at each other, work around each other. Dean steps into the shower and rubs shampoo into his hair. He wonders if in time, they’ll be like they were, or if this is how it’ll always be. He scrubs his skin and tries to be optimistic.
~*~*~*~*~*~
They work the case, efficiently, talk to witnesses and ride round in separate cars because Sam insists he’s got his set up the way he likes it and Dean’s damned if he’s giving the Impala up because she gets less to the gallon than Sam’s plastic piece of crap.
Dean sits at the table cleaning guns. It’s always helped him to think, and he can’t stop thinking about Sam. Dean’s seen it before, the disconnect, the edge of ruthlessness, the Terminator like focus that scares the shit out of him. After Broward County, after the Trickster … scratch that, after Gabriel played with Sam’s head, there’d been an edge to him too. But back then, Sam’s focus had been on Dean.
Now there’s a clinical edge to whatever is wrong with his brother. He doesn’t stop to think about the collateral damage, he just wades right on in there, kicking down doors without even trying to coax the occupant of the house to let him in, looking on as Castiel tortures a kid, holding Dean back and watching with fascination on his face.
And this? Isn’t his Sam, isn’t the man he respected for the way he cared about who they were saving, who could charm a witness into telling them things that they wouldn’t normally have spoken out loud.
Dean pauses, and glances over at Sam. That’s what’s missing. Sam’s natural empathy, his ability to understand how people are thinking and empathize with them? It’s gone, as surely as if it’s been wiped away, or torn out. Now he looks at others as if he’s an alien conducting experiments on a race of lesser beings.
Dean’s Sam would never have simply observed Castiel slipping his hand into the kid’s chest and making him cry out in pain. His Sam would have insisted they find another way.
Dean’s hands start moving on his gun again, sliding the cloth over the cold length of it and wondering if Sam’s really made of metal now, his heart replaced by a cold, precise mechanism.
Right now, he hates Gabriel with a fiery passion, and if the little fucker was there in the room, he’d kill him himself. Because the seeds were sown back then, back when Sam was trying to move mountains to get Dean out of his deal, back even further, if Dean’s honest, back when his eyes had filled with furious tears when Dean tried to pretend he wasn’t terrified of dying, of going to hell.
After Broward County, everything changed. Sam told him how he’d lived without him for months, how he’d hunted on his own and tracked down the trickster. Dean guessed there was a lot Sam hadn’t told him. His reaction to Ruby’s suggestion that they sacrifice poor, doomed anyway, virgin Nancy proved that.
But back then, it had only been an edge, a sliver of the complete and ruthless efficiency Dean is seeing now. And back then, Sam’s focus hadn’t been the job, it had been Dean. Inwardly, Dean curses himself for missing that, for missing Sam’s eyes raking over him as if he were a rare steak that he’d starve without, for missing the possessive way Sam’s hands touched him when he held him close and breathed his breath.
That had never stopped. It had stuttered to a halt sometimes, with weeks going by without the kind of touch that led to one of them being slammed against a wall as need drove them. But never, even when they were falling apart as Sam lied to him and kept his secrets, had it stopped.
It had become a fucked up comfort thing. It didn’t matter how bad the relationship had been during the day, at night, they could lose themselves in each other, give and take under the cover of darkness, and go back to hurt glances and harsh words in the morning. It had been a way of holding on as what they once had fell apart. They still sought each other out and fucked each other raw in an effort to hold on to one tenuous connection.
Dean’s train of thought is disturbed when Sam gets up and walks over to where his bag lies open on the bed. Dean watches him rummaging around in it, then makes a decision. Slowly, he gets up from where he’s been sitting, and walks over to Sam. He puts his hand on his brother’s back, tracing the muscle through two layers of cotton.
“Dean?” Sam straightens up and looks over his shoulder.
Dean’s hand snakes under Sam’s shirts at the back, and touches the skin of his waist, remembering times gone by when Sam would arch into his touch. Sam shifts round to face him, but still doesn’t object to the hand on his body.
Dean looks up at Sam, and puts his hand on Sam’s neck, fingers splaying, touching the small strands of hair that curl there.
“Oh, you want this again?” Sam asks with a smirk. He grabs Dean’s hips, pulls him close, and kisses him hard.
It could have been enough, to have Sam’s mouth on his, to have Sam’s hands on him. He could rut with Sam and get them both off, but that isn’t what he wants or what either of them need, not in Dean’s eyes . When he pulls back and looks at Sam, Sam’s face is still schooled into a mask of calm reserve.
“No, I don’t want that,” Dean shakes his head.
“You don’t? Then why are you touching me, Dean?” Sam’s brow hardly furrows as he stares at Dean with those hard eyes.
Dean has to bite back a bitter laugh. All Sam needs is a set of pointy ears and he’ll pass as a Vulcan, no problem at all.
“Because I want my brother back.”
“I’m right here.”
“No, Sam, you’re not. You’re locked down so tight, I hardly recognize you.”
Sam drops his hands and tries to step away, but Dean doesn’t let go.
“When I was freaking out about going to hell, you called me out on it, told me that you knew me, that the way I was acting was exactly how I acted when I was terrified.”
Sam listens, narrowing his eyes at Dean, but he doesn’t pull away.
“I get it, okay? You don’t want to talk to me, you want to keep whatever it is to yourself, and I have to be fine with that, even though it’s hard. I’m not gonna make you talk, you know I’ll be here if you ever want to, but I need you to let down the walls, man, I need you to let me in, just for a little while. I’m not asking you to share, I’m asking you to let it go.”
Dean watches, but there isn’t even the slightest hint of emotion playing over Sam’s features. He looks like he’s processing information and Dean takes that to mean he’s still holding everything in check.
“Not sure what you’re talking about,” Sam shakes his head, but Dean isn’t about to be put off, not now.
“Remember the first time you touched me after we left Broward County?”
“Yeah Dean, I remember,” Sam nods.
“You tore my clothes off almost before we got in the room.”
“You want me to rip your clothes off?”
“No, Sam, not that I’d hate that, but that’s not what I mean. Nothing’s changed, Sammy, it’s still only us. I’ll keep you safe, but you’ve gotta let me in.”
“Safe?”
“Yeah, safe.”
For the first time since he’d walked back into Dean’s life, Sam looks uncertain, unsure. Dean goes with his first instinct and wraps his arms around him. This time, his hug is returned with a little more intensity. Strong arms pull Dean close, but Dean doesn’t object to having the wind knocked out of him.
Then Sam’s hands are moving, pulling and tugging at Dean’s clothes as he places searing kisses on Dean’s neck and jaw. Dean groans, and pulls away just enough to shed his shirt and tee in one quick move. Now there’s heat in Sam’s eyes as he pushes Dean back to the bed, pulling his own clothes off as he goes. He unfastens his jeans and pushes them down over his hips, down his long legs, as Dean reaches for him.
After, the walls go up again. For a few minutes, Sam lies pliant in Dean’s arms, nuzzling his neck, but he ducks away when Dean reaches for him and Dean reluctantly accepts the disconnection. Now he knows he can draw Sam out from behind his cool, efficient persona, give him a safe haven to let go. It’s not perfect, but, Dean reasons with himself, it’ll do until he can help Sam take the walls down for good.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Sam doesn’t feel remorse about letting Dean think he understood what he was talking about. Dean obviously thinks that he’s been damaged in some way, hurt so much that he can’t let go, so if pretending that’s the case will get Dean to drop it, Sam’s happy to do that. It’s not like he’s even lying to Dean. Dean’s come to his own conclusions. Now, Sam reasons, he can get on with the job, and hopefully, Dean will do the same.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Lights hurt his eyes, every sound is magnified and he can smell the blood beneath Sam’s skin, but even then, Dean can tell there’s something not right. Sam’s heartbeat is strong and steady, not racing away as he knows his own would be if his brother had just been turned into a vampire.
He can’t deny there’s strength in the way he is now, and an instinct to kill so strong that it will inevitably over ride his will to resist it. He hates what he does to Lisa and Ben, scaring her and shoving Ben away, but he revels in slaughtering the nest of vamps. His heightened senses give him an edge and even their leader doesn’t stand a chance. The machete feels good in his hand as he wields it, slicing through flesh and hacking at bone until they are all dead and he’s got the head of the fang that turned him at his feet.
He can hear Sam and Samuel making their way through the carnage and as he sits waiting for them, he wonders if he needs to take the cure. He’s stronger like this, which would give him an advantage as a hunter. But all it takes is one look at Sam to know he has no choice. If he stays like this, he’ll soon not give a damn that Sam is different, and one of them has to care.
The urge to bite into flesh, Sam’s flesh, is overwhelming. He wants to push him to the ground and feast on his blood as he fucks him. He aches to taste Sam, to drink his fill, to sate himself, but he holds the desire at bay just long enough to drink Samuel’s cure.
As he writhes on the floor, he remembers seeing Sam stand back and watch him get turned, the smallest of smiles quirking at his lips. Dean pushes Sam away when he goes to help him off the floor, and stumbles into the bathroom, locking the door behind him. He sets the shower almost hot enough to burn in an effort to wash away the blood and the memories.
Sam let him get turned. He stood back and waited until the vamp had finished before he charged in. Dean shakes. The trust he’d build back up after Sam betrayed him with Ruby is shattered and for a moment he can’t breathe. He’s right back to when he thought Sam was still down in the cage with Lucifer and Michael, because maybe he is. Whoever or whatever is in the next room, isn’t his brother.
He’s more aware of Not Sam’s tells now. The way he briskly sympathizes over the situation with Lisa, but it’s clearly not sincere and all the little signs that Dean’s been noticing, but shrugging off as being a symptom of Sam being different now. But this is more than different, this is wrong.
~*~*~*~*~*~
It’s useful, to have the access into the vamp nest that Dean can provide when he gets turned, and Sam has every faith that Samuel’s cure will work, but he realizes later that his plan was flawed. He didn’t anticipate being held hostage by the goddess of truth.
Dean’s rage is expected once he knows Sam’s been fooling him, but he’s taken aback at how violent it is, and how none of his pleas to Dean can diffuse it. He comes to tied to a chair and that’s when he finally finds out what’s really wrong with him.
He screams as Castiel violates him in search of his soul and finds nothing.
Dean’s eyes are harder now when he looks at Sam, and he no longer wants Sam to touch him. Sam doesn’t take it as an insult or a punishment. It’s an inconvenience because now he has to go out looking for sex when he needs release.
They fuck again before Sam tells Dean that he doesn’t care about him.
In the dark afterwards, Sam comes the closest he has to putting how he is into words.
“I’m still me. I remember what it was like to feel, and I remember what it was like to love you.”
Dean’s heart clenches painfully at the words.
“Part of me doesn’t want my soul back, because feeling hurts, aches, I remember that too. All those times you didn’t trust me, all those times you looked at me like I was a monster? They hurt so bad, Dean, but now when you look at me like that, I understand. And it doesn’t hurt, it just is.”
Dean puts his hand on Sam’s face. Sam continues to look at him, not pressing into the touch like the old Sam would have.
“When I get my soul back, I’m going to have to face what I did to you, how I used you to track those vamps, how I used you as bait. How will I live with that?”
But it’s too much effort to keep up the pretence, and after Sam tells him the truth, that he doesn’t care at all, Dean grows colder towards him.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Another hunt, carried out with efficiency, fugly monster executed RoboSam style, but not before it had flung them around, bounced them both off a couple of walls. Dean’s sore and achy when they get back to the motel room. He really wants to shower, jerk off, eat and sleep. He reckons he’ll combine the first two, for practicalities sake, but when it comes to it, he’s not in the mood.
Once he’s showered, he walks out of the bathroom in sweats and an old t shirt. Sam’s taking delivery of pizza, and it smells so good.
“Thanks man.” He’s really grateful, even more so when Sam cracks a beer open for him, and pushes the pizza box across the table towards him.
“I’m gonna grab a shower.”
Dean nods. Sam will probably do that like he does everything else, with efficiency. He’ll probably have no problem jerking off either, Dean muses. Not like he’s got any pesky feelings to kill the mood for him. He remembers what Anna said, how angels couldn’t feel, and he wonders if it’s not the better option.
Right now, there are so many emotions churning inside him that he can hardly think straight. There’s betrayal, that Sam was back for a whole year without telling him. Now he knows why, that it would never have occurred to this Sam that knowing he was back would have been the merciful thing to do, given that all through his year of playing house with Lisa, there was a heavy undercurrent of knowing that Sam was suffering in Hell. There’s anguish, because having the body of your brother alive and hanging out with you while his soul is still in the pit has to be the most fucked up thing he’s every been through, and he’s lived a whole life of fucked up situations. And there’s hurt, that the entity that’s with him doesn’t give a damn about him. Sam, even through everything they’d done and said to each other, had loved him. Dean knew that with such a certainty that it hurts deeply to know that’s not the case now. The part of Sam that loved Dean is still down in Hell.
The bathroom door opens, and Sam walks out, a towel tucked around his waist.
Dean glances over, his eyes lingering for a second on Sam’s torso. Sam had always been cut, hiding those muscles of his under layers of clothing, but Robo Sam has taken it to the next level.
He doesn’t realize he’s been staring until Sam calls him on it.
“Dean?”
“Huh?”
“Not hungry?” Sam motions towards the pizza. Dean’s been too lost in his maudlin thoughts to eat much more than half a slice.
“Yeah, I, er, just tired I guess.”
Sam nods, but he’s got the look he gets on his face now when he’s processing information. Dean tucks into another slice, looking up as Sam walks towards him. Sam hasn’t changed into sweats or jeans or even shorts, he’s still only got the towel around his waist. He sits down opposite Dean, his bare knee brushing Dean’s cotton covered one. Dean startles away, but Sam’s got the scent now, he’s picked up on signals so subtle Dean doesn’t even know he’s making them anymore.
“I know you still want me, Dean?”
“What?!?” Dean almost chokes on the bite of pizza in his mouth.
“Okay, maybe not me, but you still want him. Sammy. It’s the same body, so what’s the problem?”
There’s the barest hint of a smile on Sam’s face which Dean would dearly love to wipe off with his fist.
“I’m not interested.” Dean gets up from the table and walks over to his bed. That’s another thing that’s changed. He always took the bed nearest the door when it was him and Sammy, but now, Sam takes it every time and Dean gets the feeling that he’s waiting for him to question it.
Dean throws himself on the bed, his back to Sam, which he’s really not comfortable doing, but he wants to make a point. He doesn’t relax until he hears Sam get dressed and leave.
Dean can’t sleep, although he dearly wants to. Sleep would stop the aching in his chest, if only for a few hours and then there’s that delicious moment, every time he wakes, a second or two where he doesn’t remember what’s happened. For those two seconds, everything’s okay. His mind resets itself and he wakes up knowing that he and Sam are on the road hunting. His Sam, the one who doesn’t think it’s okay to take a shot that would have killed a civilian in the process, even if it did get the job done.
Then Dean remembers, it all slams back, and takes it like a bullet to the chest.
He doesn’t know what’s worse. Driving around with his brother’s animated corpse in the passenger seat, a corpse that doesn’t give a shit about hurting or killing just as long as the job gets done, or anticipating how Sammy will deal with being back when his soul is returned.
“I’ve killed people, innocent people.”
Dean wants to yell at Sam, to demand a list of everyone he’s killed in the line of duty, wants to know exactly how he killed them, exactly how much blood he has on his hands. Because when they get Sammy back, he’s going to tear himself up inside at what Sam has done while he’s been gone.
Dean remembers Sam looking at him with damp eyes, telling him that he wanted his brother back. Now it’s Dean’s turn to want that, to want Sam to be the one reminding him that they can’t do something because it’s wrong, to look at him with that mixture of annoyance and exasperation that’s pure Sammy. He wants to hear Sammy laugh again. Not the sound of Sam pretending to laugh for effect.
In their lives, they didn’t often have cause to laugh, or smile, unless it was with each other. As well as keeping each other human, they kept each other sane. A difficult task given how they were raised, but one they both did unconsciously, as naturally as eating or drinking.
Sometimes he wonders if he’s really still in hell. If everything that’s happened since he supposedly got back is really an elaborate form of torment. Every time he looks at Sam, a stranger looks back at him, and that’s just about the worst thing he could imagine. Worse than knowing, or thinking he knew that Sam was down in the cage. Worse by far, because his Sammy is still down there, and there’s a sociopath walking around in his skin. It’s worse than possession because there’s nothing to cast out. Something needs to go back in, and Dean is having to swallow his pride and work for demons in order to get it back.
Part Two
Link to art: The Art
Characters: Dean/Soulless Sam, Dean/Soulful Sam
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 13,905
Beta:
seleneheartDisclaimer: Sadly, they aren't mine, I'm just playing with them for a while.
Notes: Written for the Sam Dean Mini Bang. Art by
yanyann. The title comes from Linkin Park's "What I've Done", and the fic was inspired by the lyrics which are at the end of the story. Warnings: Manipulative Sam. Dub con in part two.
Summary: Sam knows he’s not the same as before he jumped into the pit, but he doesn’t care. When Dean joins him on the road again, he realizes Sam is different too, but he does care. As the truth comes out, their relationship unravels. When Sam gets his soul back, he finds himself rebuilding what he had with his brother and dealing with fragments of broken memories that only give him half the story.
Dean watches helplessly as Sam falls back into the cage, pulling Adam with him. Everything he is, everything he lives for is swallowed up as the earth closes behind them and he’s left alone. Slowly, his body screaming for him to stay still, he crawls to the spot where the key to the cage lies cooling on the grass. He reaches down, fingers brushing over heated metal, his head hanging low.
It doesn’t matter what he promised Sam, he hasn’t got the strength or the will to move, to go on. Maybe, he wonders as his mind drifts, if he sits here long enough, the ground will open up and swallow him too, then he won’t have to go on, won’t have to exist without Sam.
Everything hurts, every cell in his body aches and his mind is so full of grief that he doesn’t understand how he’s still conscious. Sam’s gone … Sam, Bobby, Castiel and a short list of everyone Dean’s ever cared about. They’re all gone, and he’s completely alone.
But then a shadow falls across him. He looks up, startled to find Castiel standing over him, gazing down and reaching out a healing hand. Dean’s face is restored in a heartbeat, but his soul aches, feels like it’s been torn in two. Nothing can heal the savage wound deep in his chest where Sam was ripped from him. His heart shattered as his brother fell and despite Lisa caring for him and Ben becoming like a son to him in the months that follow, nothing can put his heart back together again.
Sam wakes in an empty field. The damp grass tickles his neck, and the early morning dew soaks into his clothes. He blinks and sits up, looking around. There’s no sign of the cemetery, no sign of Dean or the door to the cage. He’s in a different place, one he doesn’t recognize, but he’s fairly certain it isn’t the cage. He assesses his surroundings as he gets to his feet.
It doesn’t take him long to get moving. He finds a car, hotwires it, and drives towards the place he expects Dean will be. As he drives, it hits him that he doesn’t have any memories of the cage after he fell. Either he’s repressing everything that happened, or he didn’t spend any time down there. He stops at the next gas station, and checks out the date of the papers on the news stand while he buys as many snacks as the money in his wallet will allow. He’s starving, even though it turns out he’s only been gone for two days.
He feels … different. When he thinks back on the events in the cemetery, he knows that it caused him incredible anguish, to see Lucifer beat Dean as he did, to feel Dean’s bones shatter beneath his fists. He knows it was the need to protect his brother that enabled him to take control back from the devil and jump into the cage.
But now he sees it with a cool detachment, as if it had happened to someone else, or played out in front of him on a movie screen. He has the memories, but can’t associate them with the anguish he went through. It should still hurt, but it doesn’t. The feelings aren’t his anymore.
Sam eases his foot back off the gas, and lets the stolen car slow until it stops by the side of the road. He gets out and sits on the hood, as he’s done so many times with Dean at his side. But even those memories don’t come with how it felt to sit side by side with his brother and listen to him pour out his heart. He can remember times when they did that, he can remember the pain he felt when Dean finally broke down and told him about hell, but the detachment allows him to view the memories without the added burden of emotions.
He begins to question why he’s heading towards Dean. He told his brother to build a life without him, and if he’s started to do that, then he doesn’t need Sam. He’ll have a new family to care for and who care for him.
Sam gets back in the car, and heads to Lisa’s anyway. He’s curious as to whether Dean kept his promise. He stands under a streetlight, gazing through the window at the domestic scene playing out in the house. Lisa is attentive, serving food and looking fondly at Dean. That’s what he’s always wanted, Sam muses, so he can have it.
He turns and gets back into the car, heading towards South Dakota. Bobby has the resources he needs to get back into hunting on his own.
Sam doesn’t see Dean again for a year.
He kills his first civilian three weeks after he gets back. It brings it home to him just how different he is. She's terrified, eyes pleading with him to save her, but she’s in the way of his objective. The demon holds her close, triumph in its borrowed eyes. Hunters are the good guys, they save people, they don't sacrifice them, they keep them alive.
Only this hunter is different.
As the demon grins, Sam's eyes narrow. He doesn't think, he simply takes the most logical course of action to get the job done. He shoots the girl, removing any leverage the demon has over him, then takes advantage of the shock his actions cause, and dispatches the demon.
He checks both bodies for signs of life, but as he expects, there are none. He casts his eyes over the scene, making sure he hasn't left any evidence of his presence behind, and leaves.
He knows that before he fell, he wouldn't have sacrificed a civilian to get the job done. He would have put the gun down, hoping that the demon would then release the girl, then he would have made sure she was safe before resuming his pursuit. Before he fell, he would be tortured over what he's just done. Now, he's not. He doesn't feel anything.
Right then, Sam decides that this new way is better, it makes him more efficient. He has no feelings or emotions to hold him back. That can only be a good thing in a life lived hunting monsters. There will always be collateral damage, and now he can accept that without the pain and hurt that always came with not being able to save civilians.
He thinks of Madison. He remembers how crushed he'd been, having to kill her, how his heart broke in two, and how Dean was there to help him patch it back together again. But the pain had lingered. It had impaired his ability to do the job, had distracted him.
Now, he doesn't have that problem. He can be a better hunter without the distractions.
Sam wonders if his two days in hell resulted in post traumatic stress, and that's why he can't feel anything anymore. But the reason for it doesn't concern him. He's better off as he is. He knows Dean wouldn't understand, so when Samuel suggests they bring Dean in to work with them, Sam talks him out of it.
"He's got a family now, and he's out of the life. Not many hunters get to do that."
Samuel agrees, shades of his own lost family haunting his eyes.
That's the point Sam gets it. He can use the fact that everyone else does feel emotions to his own advantage. He becomes a master manipulator, he takes the feelings and emotions of others and twists them to suit his own purposes.
He doesn't tell Samuel that the real reason he doesn't want Dean hunting with them is that he will question Sam's way of working. Samuel and the rest of the Campbell clan have never hunted with Sam before, so they won't know the difference. They know him by reputation, which is as a badass hunter. They never saw the side of him that Dean did, so as far as they are concerned, this is how Sam's always been.
A month is long enough for him to stop wondering why he is how he is. After a year, it's who he is. He sees Samuel looking at him sometimes, mainly after a particular brutal hunt where Sam didn't hesitate to do what needed to be done. Sam doesn't consider trying to give him an explanation. There's no need. If Samuel doesn't like the way Sam is, Sam doesn't care. It's not important how his grandfather sees him. The only important thing is the job, the hunt.
Sam's shocked when it turns out that something else is important.
Dean.
The djinn's children target Sam first, filling his head with images of Ruby taunting him. She flicks her dark hair back and smirks, reminding him how he chose her over Dean, wrapping her hands around his throat, just as he’d done to Dean as they fought before Lucifer rose.
There’s a sharp pain in his chest, and his world goes black. When he wakes, Samuel explains about the antidote, and the crew swings into action and goes after the djinn. It doesn’t take long to realize that they are, in turn, going after Dean.
Even as he’s putting his foot on the gas, he’s wondering why the need to protect his brother is so strong. They were more than brothers, he knows that. He has memories of them fucking, memories of them sleeping in the same bed together, but that was then. Now, Sam acknowledges that Dean was a good lay, but he doesn’t love him. Sam accepts that he isn’t capable of love, any more then he’s capable of hate. Even the things he hunts, he doesn’t hate them. He does his job. He knows that they are the bad guys, so he takes them out, or takes them down and lets Samuel do whatever he’s doing with them.
Sam puts his thoughts aside, needing to focus on the job at hand. He turns his perfectly honed hunter’s skills on tracking the djinn but they move fast, and Dean is infected by the time he gets there. He takes an unconscious Dean back to the Campbell's base with him, and waits while he sleeps off the after effects of the antidote, watching his brother.
He decides there and then that he wants Dean hunting with him again. It makes sense. They work well together. For all that the Campbells are good hunters, no-one is as good as his brother. And he'll be even better, Sam reasons, once he accepts that Sam can take care of himself. And once he gets back into shape and back in the game.
As Sam watches, Dean shifts on the cot he's lying on, and his eyelids crack open. He sits up and looks at Sam, shock in his eyes.
“Hey Dean.”
It doesn’t take long.
One moment Dean’s opening his eyes, looking at the brother he hasn’t seen for a year, wondering if he’s dead, and joined him in their shared heaven. The next, he’s across the room, hugging him tight. But in another heartbeat, he realizes that Sam hasn’t hugged him back with the same intensity. Not that Dean would ever mention that, but Sam? He’s a hugger when he gets the chance, fit to crush Dean’s ribs if it follows one of them dying or coming back from hell.
Then Dean finds out he’s been back for a year, and his world tilts off its axis. Even when the hits keep coming and he finds out about the Campbells and their grand daddy, it’s the first revelation that sticks with him.
Sam’s been back a whole year, and never thought to contact him.
Sam’s right. He has something with Lisa, he’s been building something, but he’s back to square one after Sam leaves in his douche of a car. Back to feeling lost and out of place.
Sam’s back, but the reunion he’s occasionally let himself picture when he’s thought of Sam over the year, fizzled and died in the face of Sam’s cool demeanor. Sam’s back, but he’s not Dean’s Sam anymore, not the way he used to be.
Dean drags his feet as he walks back into the house he’s called home for a year, and finds the whiskey. Some things aren’t meant to be faced sober.
It’s inevitable that Dean will follow Sam back into hunting. He tries to let it go, but even Lisa sees the need in him to be with Sam.
The first time Sam touches him again is the night before Castiel shows up after a year of doing whatever angels do when there’s war in heaven.
Sam books them into the motel, all lazy smiles at the girl behind the desk. Dean bites back a stupid comment, that it’s his job to book them in and flirt with the receptionist. Instead, he watches as the young blonde flutters her eyelashes at Sam, and makes it perfectly clear that he could have her right there on the desk if he wants.
Dean shifts uncomfortably, rolling his eyes as she blatantly offers Sam her number and he takes it with a grin. Then Sam’s off down the corridor towards the stairs, Dean trailing behind him and wondering what the hell just happened. Had the universe declared it to be opposite day or something, because Dean’s sure it’s usually him that turns the charm on, and Sam that rolls his eyes.
It makes Dean uneasy. Sam’s lived for a year without a big brother around. He’s changed, that’s obvious, exuding arrogance more than confidence. Dean wonders if it’s a natural progression, without someone around to keep him grounded. Keep him human. That’s something Dean stuffs back into the darker corners of his mind.
Sam’s back. Yes, he’s changed, but he’s still Sam, still Dean’s pain in the ass little brother.
An hour later, fresh from the shower, Sam reaches for him. Dean’s skin tingles as Sam’s hand closes around his shoulder.
Used to be, when Sam kissed him, there’d be warmth in his eyes, an eager need to be closer to Dean, sometimes even guilt, that he craved his brother in ways he shouldn’t. Dean could always soothe that away, with soft words whispered against Sam’s neck, have him panting and gasping Dean’s name as he came.
This time, Sam’s eyes are full of cold, calculating lust. While Dean’s still processing the fact that Sam still wants him like this, Sam’s pushing him backwards until he meets the wall behind him. Dean wants Sam too, he’s missed the way they were together, strong, hard, not having to worry about hurting each other when things got rough. That’s something he’s only ever had with Sam, only ever wanted with Sam, so when Sam turns him around and yanks his jeans down, Dean whimpers and luxuriates in the way Sam’s strong hands grip his wrists as he presses his dick against Dean’s ass.
Sam’s long, slicked fingers probe deep inside him, opening him up in more ways than one. It’s never been just sex with Sam. If Dean wanted sex, he could go to a bar and pick up a girl, show her a very good time, and come away sated and relaxed. But Sam has the power to shatter Dean into pieces, force him to bare his soul every time Sam’s hands move on his body, pushing him to break apart and let him in.
The first time Sam fucked him, he lay in the dark afterwards, chest heaving, staring wide eyed at the ceiling. His body was wrung out, sated in a way it hadn’t been before, boneless and liquid, but his mind was racing, panicked, freaking the hell out. Sam wandered back from the bathroom, still naked, but he didn’t lie down on the opposite bed as Dean expected him to, he lay down next to Dean and kissed his shoulder.
Dean let out a strangled burst of laughter, which seemed appropriate as he was tipping over the edge right into hysteria.
“Dean.” Sam’s voice was sleepy as his fingers drew circles on Dean’s hip.
Dean pushed himself up on his elbows, looking round to locate his jeans.
“Where’re you going?” Sam asked, puzzled.
“I, um, I gotta … go.”
“Go where?”
“Someplace …”
Sam took hold of his arm and pulled him back down to the bed, wrapping his arms around him and effectively trapping him.
“Don’t freak on me, man, not now.”
Sam nuzzled Dean’s neck, mouthing over the soft skin behind his ear, and Dean slowly relaxed, falling asleep with Sam still holding him close.
Dean still remembers exactly how that felt.
So now in one way, Dean’s got Sam back, but when he wakes up, Sam’s not plastered to his back or curled against his chest. He’s sitting at the table staring intently at the laptop screen and sipping on a coffee. There’s another coffee on the table, and enough donuts for both of them, but Dean’s missing the way he’d wake all wrapped up in Sam. Lazy, morning breath kisses and stretching together, untangling limbs and tangling them together again, rocking against each other, mouths roaming over skin until they came messily, sticky and sweet.
Dean pushes himself up onto his elbows and watches Sam. He knows they’ve been apart for over a year, that habits change, but it’s more than that.
“Hey,” Sam looks over at him. “I got you coffee and breakfast.”
“Thanks. How long you been up?”
“A while. You should shower, we need to get going.” Sam looks back down at the laptop.
Dean grunts and gets up, snagging a donut and his coffee and wolfing them down before he heads to the bathroom to get the shower going. He’s basically doing as he’s told and that isn’t how they work. The bitch at each other, work around each other. Dean steps into the shower and rubs shampoo into his hair. He wonders if in time, they’ll be like they were, or if this is how it’ll always be. He scrubs his skin and tries to be optimistic.
They work the case, efficiently, talk to witnesses and ride round in separate cars because Sam insists he’s got his set up the way he likes it and Dean’s damned if he’s giving the Impala up because she gets less to the gallon than Sam’s plastic piece of crap.
Dean sits at the table cleaning guns. It’s always helped him to think, and he can’t stop thinking about Sam. Dean’s seen it before, the disconnect, the edge of ruthlessness, the Terminator like focus that scares the shit out of him. After Broward County, after the Trickster … scratch that, after Gabriel played with Sam’s head, there’d been an edge to him too. But back then, Sam’s focus had been on Dean.
Now there’s a clinical edge to whatever is wrong with his brother. He doesn’t stop to think about the collateral damage, he just wades right on in there, kicking down doors without even trying to coax the occupant of the house to let him in, looking on as Castiel tortures a kid, holding Dean back and watching with fascination on his face.
And this? Isn’t his Sam, isn’t the man he respected for the way he cared about who they were saving, who could charm a witness into telling them things that they wouldn’t normally have spoken out loud.
Dean pauses, and glances over at Sam. That’s what’s missing. Sam’s natural empathy, his ability to understand how people are thinking and empathize with them? It’s gone, as surely as if it’s been wiped away, or torn out. Now he looks at others as if he’s an alien conducting experiments on a race of lesser beings.
Dean’s Sam would never have simply observed Castiel slipping his hand into the kid’s chest and making him cry out in pain. His Sam would have insisted they find another way.
Dean’s hands start moving on his gun again, sliding the cloth over the cold length of it and wondering if Sam’s really made of metal now, his heart replaced by a cold, precise mechanism.
Right now, he hates Gabriel with a fiery passion, and if the little fucker was there in the room, he’d kill him himself. Because the seeds were sown back then, back when Sam was trying to move mountains to get Dean out of his deal, back even further, if Dean’s honest, back when his eyes had filled with furious tears when Dean tried to pretend he wasn’t terrified of dying, of going to hell.
After Broward County, everything changed. Sam told him how he’d lived without him for months, how he’d hunted on his own and tracked down the trickster. Dean guessed there was a lot Sam hadn’t told him. His reaction to Ruby’s suggestion that they sacrifice poor, doomed anyway, virgin Nancy proved that.
But back then, it had only been an edge, a sliver of the complete and ruthless efficiency Dean is seeing now. And back then, Sam’s focus hadn’t been the job, it had been Dean. Inwardly, Dean curses himself for missing that, for missing Sam’s eyes raking over him as if he were a rare steak that he’d starve without, for missing the possessive way Sam’s hands touched him when he held him close and breathed his breath.
That had never stopped. It had stuttered to a halt sometimes, with weeks going by without the kind of touch that led to one of them being slammed against a wall as need drove them. But never, even when they were falling apart as Sam lied to him and kept his secrets, had it stopped.
It had become a fucked up comfort thing. It didn’t matter how bad the relationship had been during the day, at night, they could lose themselves in each other, give and take under the cover of darkness, and go back to hurt glances and harsh words in the morning. It had been a way of holding on as what they once had fell apart. They still sought each other out and fucked each other raw in an effort to hold on to one tenuous connection.
Dean’s train of thought is disturbed when Sam gets up and walks over to where his bag lies open on the bed. Dean watches him rummaging around in it, then makes a decision. Slowly, he gets up from where he’s been sitting, and walks over to Sam. He puts his hand on his brother’s back, tracing the muscle through two layers of cotton.
“Dean?” Sam straightens up and looks over his shoulder.
Dean’s hand snakes under Sam’s shirts at the back, and touches the skin of his waist, remembering times gone by when Sam would arch into his touch. Sam shifts round to face him, but still doesn’t object to the hand on his body.
Dean looks up at Sam, and puts his hand on Sam’s neck, fingers splaying, touching the small strands of hair that curl there.
“Oh, you want this again?” Sam asks with a smirk. He grabs Dean’s hips, pulls him close, and kisses him hard.
It could have been enough, to have Sam’s mouth on his, to have Sam’s hands on him. He could rut with Sam and get them both off, but that isn’t what he wants or what either of them need, not in Dean’s eyes . When he pulls back and looks at Sam, Sam’s face is still schooled into a mask of calm reserve.
“No, I don’t want that,” Dean shakes his head.
“You don’t? Then why are you touching me, Dean?” Sam’s brow hardly furrows as he stares at Dean with those hard eyes.
Dean has to bite back a bitter laugh. All Sam needs is a set of pointy ears and he’ll pass as a Vulcan, no problem at all.
“Because I want my brother back.”
“I’m right here.”
“No, Sam, you’re not. You’re locked down so tight, I hardly recognize you.”
Sam drops his hands and tries to step away, but Dean doesn’t let go.
“When I was freaking out about going to hell, you called me out on it, told me that you knew me, that the way I was acting was exactly how I acted when I was terrified.”
Sam listens, narrowing his eyes at Dean, but he doesn’t pull away.
“I get it, okay? You don’t want to talk to me, you want to keep whatever it is to yourself, and I have to be fine with that, even though it’s hard. I’m not gonna make you talk, you know I’ll be here if you ever want to, but I need you to let down the walls, man, I need you to let me in, just for a little while. I’m not asking you to share, I’m asking you to let it go.”
Dean watches, but there isn’t even the slightest hint of emotion playing over Sam’s features. He looks like he’s processing information and Dean takes that to mean he’s still holding everything in check.
“Not sure what you’re talking about,” Sam shakes his head, but Dean isn’t about to be put off, not now.
“Remember the first time you touched me after we left Broward County?”
“Yeah Dean, I remember,” Sam nods.
“You tore my clothes off almost before we got in the room.”
“You want me to rip your clothes off?”
“No, Sam, not that I’d hate that, but that’s not what I mean. Nothing’s changed, Sammy, it’s still only us. I’ll keep you safe, but you’ve gotta let me in.”
“Safe?”
“Yeah, safe.”
For the first time since he’d walked back into Dean’s life, Sam looks uncertain, unsure. Dean goes with his first instinct and wraps his arms around him. This time, his hug is returned with a little more intensity. Strong arms pull Dean close, but Dean doesn’t object to having the wind knocked out of him.
Then Sam’s hands are moving, pulling and tugging at Dean’s clothes as he places searing kisses on Dean’s neck and jaw. Dean groans, and pulls away just enough to shed his shirt and tee in one quick move. Now there’s heat in Sam’s eyes as he pushes Dean back to the bed, pulling his own clothes off as he goes. He unfastens his jeans and pushes them down over his hips, down his long legs, as Dean reaches for him.
After, the walls go up again. For a few minutes, Sam lies pliant in Dean’s arms, nuzzling his neck, but he ducks away when Dean reaches for him and Dean reluctantly accepts the disconnection. Now he knows he can draw Sam out from behind his cool, efficient persona, give him a safe haven to let go. It’s not perfect, but, Dean reasons with himself, it’ll do until he can help Sam take the walls down for good.
Sam doesn’t feel remorse about letting Dean think he understood what he was talking about. Dean obviously thinks that he’s been damaged in some way, hurt so much that he can’t let go, so if pretending that’s the case will get Dean to drop it, Sam’s happy to do that. It’s not like he’s even lying to Dean. Dean’s come to his own conclusions. Now, Sam reasons, he can get on with the job, and hopefully, Dean will do the same.
Lights hurt his eyes, every sound is magnified and he can smell the blood beneath Sam’s skin, but even then, Dean can tell there’s something not right. Sam’s heartbeat is strong and steady, not racing away as he knows his own would be if his brother had just been turned into a vampire.
He can’t deny there’s strength in the way he is now, and an instinct to kill so strong that it will inevitably over ride his will to resist it. He hates what he does to Lisa and Ben, scaring her and shoving Ben away, but he revels in slaughtering the nest of vamps. His heightened senses give him an edge and even their leader doesn’t stand a chance. The machete feels good in his hand as he wields it, slicing through flesh and hacking at bone until they are all dead and he’s got the head of the fang that turned him at his feet.
He can hear Sam and Samuel making their way through the carnage and as he sits waiting for them, he wonders if he needs to take the cure. He’s stronger like this, which would give him an advantage as a hunter. But all it takes is one look at Sam to know he has no choice. If he stays like this, he’ll soon not give a damn that Sam is different, and one of them has to care.
The urge to bite into flesh, Sam’s flesh, is overwhelming. He wants to push him to the ground and feast on his blood as he fucks him. He aches to taste Sam, to drink his fill, to sate himself, but he holds the desire at bay just long enough to drink Samuel’s cure.
As he writhes on the floor, he remembers seeing Sam stand back and watch him get turned, the smallest of smiles quirking at his lips. Dean pushes Sam away when he goes to help him off the floor, and stumbles into the bathroom, locking the door behind him. He sets the shower almost hot enough to burn in an effort to wash away the blood and the memories.
Sam let him get turned. He stood back and waited until the vamp had finished before he charged in. Dean shakes. The trust he’d build back up after Sam betrayed him with Ruby is shattered and for a moment he can’t breathe. He’s right back to when he thought Sam was still down in the cage with Lucifer and Michael, because maybe he is. Whoever or whatever is in the next room, isn’t his brother.
He’s more aware of Not Sam’s tells now. The way he briskly sympathizes over the situation with Lisa, but it’s clearly not sincere and all the little signs that Dean’s been noticing, but shrugging off as being a symptom of Sam being different now. But this is more than different, this is wrong.
It’s useful, to have the access into the vamp nest that Dean can provide when he gets turned, and Sam has every faith that Samuel’s cure will work, but he realizes later that his plan was flawed. He didn’t anticipate being held hostage by the goddess of truth.
Dean’s rage is expected once he knows Sam’s been fooling him, but he’s taken aback at how violent it is, and how none of his pleas to Dean can diffuse it. He comes to tied to a chair and that’s when he finally finds out what’s really wrong with him.
He screams as Castiel violates him in search of his soul and finds nothing.
Dean’s eyes are harder now when he looks at Sam, and he no longer wants Sam to touch him. Sam doesn’t take it as an insult or a punishment. It’s an inconvenience because now he has to go out looking for sex when he needs release.
They fuck again before Sam tells Dean that he doesn’t care about him.
In the dark afterwards, Sam comes the closest he has to putting how he is into words.
“I’m still me. I remember what it was like to feel, and I remember what it was like to love you.”
Dean’s heart clenches painfully at the words.
“Part of me doesn’t want my soul back, because feeling hurts, aches, I remember that too. All those times you didn’t trust me, all those times you looked at me like I was a monster? They hurt so bad, Dean, but now when you look at me like that, I understand. And it doesn’t hurt, it just is.”
Dean puts his hand on Sam’s face. Sam continues to look at him, not pressing into the touch like the old Sam would have.
“When I get my soul back, I’m going to have to face what I did to you, how I used you to track those vamps, how I used you as bait. How will I live with that?”
But it’s too much effort to keep up the pretence, and after Sam tells him the truth, that he doesn’t care at all, Dean grows colder towards him.
Another hunt, carried out with efficiency, fugly monster executed RoboSam style, but not before it had flung them around, bounced them both off a couple of walls. Dean’s sore and achy when they get back to the motel room. He really wants to shower, jerk off, eat and sleep. He reckons he’ll combine the first two, for practicalities sake, but when it comes to it, he’s not in the mood.
Once he’s showered, he walks out of the bathroom in sweats and an old t shirt. Sam’s taking delivery of pizza, and it smells so good.
“Thanks man.” He’s really grateful, even more so when Sam cracks a beer open for him, and pushes the pizza box across the table towards him.
“I’m gonna grab a shower.”
Dean nods. Sam will probably do that like he does everything else, with efficiency. He’ll probably have no problem jerking off either, Dean muses. Not like he’s got any pesky feelings to kill the mood for him. He remembers what Anna said, how angels couldn’t feel, and he wonders if it’s not the better option.
Right now, there are so many emotions churning inside him that he can hardly think straight. There’s betrayal, that Sam was back for a whole year without telling him. Now he knows why, that it would never have occurred to this Sam that knowing he was back would have been the merciful thing to do, given that all through his year of playing house with Lisa, there was a heavy undercurrent of knowing that Sam was suffering in Hell. There’s anguish, because having the body of your brother alive and hanging out with you while his soul is still in the pit has to be the most fucked up thing he’s every been through, and he’s lived a whole life of fucked up situations. And there’s hurt, that the entity that’s with him doesn’t give a damn about him. Sam, even through everything they’d done and said to each other, had loved him. Dean knew that with such a certainty that it hurts deeply to know that’s not the case now. The part of Sam that loved Dean is still down in Hell.
The bathroom door opens, and Sam walks out, a towel tucked around his waist.
Dean glances over, his eyes lingering for a second on Sam’s torso. Sam had always been cut, hiding those muscles of his under layers of clothing, but Robo Sam has taken it to the next level.
He doesn’t realize he’s been staring until Sam calls him on it.
“Dean?”
“Huh?”
“Not hungry?” Sam motions towards the pizza. Dean’s been too lost in his maudlin thoughts to eat much more than half a slice.
“Yeah, I, er, just tired I guess.”
Sam nods, but he’s got the look he gets on his face now when he’s processing information. Dean tucks into another slice, looking up as Sam walks towards him. Sam hasn’t changed into sweats or jeans or even shorts, he’s still only got the towel around his waist. He sits down opposite Dean, his bare knee brushing Dean’s cotton covered one. Dean startles away, but Sam’s got the scent now, he’s picked up on signals so subtle Dean doesn’t even know he’s making them anymore.
“I know you still want me, Dean?”
“What?!?” Dean almost chokes on the bite of pizza in his mouth.
“Okay, maybe not me, but you still want him. Sammy. It’s the same body, so what’s the problem?”
There’s the barest hint of a smile on Sam’s face which Dean would dearly love to wipe off with his fist.
“I’m not interested.” Dean gets up from the table and walks over to his bed. That’s another thing that’s changed. He always took the bed nearest the door when it was him and Sammy, but now, Sam takes it every time and Dean gets the feeling that he’s waiting for him to question it.
Dean throws himself on the bed, his back to Sam, which he’s really not comfortable doing, but he wants to make a point. He doesn’t relax until he hears Sam get dressed and leave.
Dean can’t sleep, although he dearly wants to. Sleep would stop the aching in his chest, if only for a few hours and then there’s that delicious moment, every time he wakes, a second or two where he doesn’t remember what’s happened. For those two seconds, everything’s okay. His mind resets itself and he wakes up knowing that he and Sam are on the road hunting. His Sam, the one who doesn’t think it’s okay to take a shot that would have killed a civilian in the process, even if it did get the job done.
Then Dean remembers, it all slams back, and takes it like a bullet to the chest.
He doesn’t know what’s worse. Driving around with his brother’s animated corpse in the passenger seat, a corpse that doesn’t give a shit about hurting or killing just as long as the job gets done, or anticipating how Sammy will deal with being back when his soul is returned.
“I’ve killed people, innocent people.”
Dean wants to yell at Sam, to demand a list of everyone he’s killed in the line of duty, wants to know exactly how he killed them, exactly how much blood he has on his hands. Because when they get Sammy back, he’s going to tear himself up inside at what Sam has done while he’s been gone.
Dean remembers Sam looking at him with damp eyes, telling him that he wanted his brother back. Now it’s Dean’s turn to want that, to want Sam to be the one reminding him that they can’t do something because it’s wrong, to look at him with that mixture of annoyance and exasperation that’s pure Sammy. He wants to hear Sammy laugh again. Not the sound of Sam pretending to laugh for effect.
In their lives, they didn’t often have cause to laugh, or smile, unless it was with each other. As well as keeping each other human, they kept each other sane. A difficult task given how they were raised, but one they both did unconsciously, as naturally as eating or drinking.
Sometimes he wonders if he’s really still in hell. If everything that’s happened since he supposedly got back is really an elaborate form of torment. Every time he looks at Sam, a stranger looks back at him, and that’s just about the worst thing he could imagine. Worse than knowing, or thinking he knew that Sam was down in the cage. Worse by far, because his Sammy is still down there, and there’s a sociopath walking around in his skin. It’s worse than possession because there’s nothing to cast out. Something needs to go back in, and Dean is having to swallow his pride and work for demons in order to get it back.
Part Two
