Fingers To Words

That Livid Star Appears - McCoy/Chekov

2009-09-13T07:42:23Z

Title: That Livid Star Appears
Pairing: McCoy/Chekov
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Underage drug use, rape of a minor, and prostitution for drugs. Yeah, I'm a dirty dirty little writer.
Disclaimer: I don't own them. I wish I owned them. But I'd probably break them.
Summary: A fill for a couple of very similar promts from the st_xi_kink meme that basically boil down to - Everyone assumes that Chekov is a sweet, innocent little virgin, but they're wrong. There are things in his past that are dark, and they're about to be brought to light.
Author's note: I chose not to write out Chekov's accent (except when he says Keptin, cuz that's just too damn cute) because it ended up looking ridiculous. I can't seem to find the happy medium between nothing, and 'wow, what the hell did he just say?'. Title taken from the poem 'The Irremediable' by Charles Baudelaire. Enjoy!

That Livid Star Appears

Late night in the officers lounge and they were all well beyond drunk. Another successful mission had ended - and by successful Kirk means no one died, but there are currently three injured crewmembers taking up space in McCoy’s sickbay because of their ‘success’, thank you very much - and this was cause for celebration. Spock had wondered off hours ago, as had Uhura, both of them sending disapproving looks over their shoulders as they left. Kirk was currently working on what was his third beer since McCoy had told him it was time to quit, Sulu was passed out happily, head resting directly on the table, one hand in the half empty bowl of cocktail olives, and Chekov, who had been snuck in by someone and then consequently ignored by the bar staff as usual, was staring at the ceiling, smiling contently at the dimmed, blue lights overhead. The kid held an empty shot glass in one hand, the other hand flicking across the 4 other glasses that he had consumed that night, fingers flying over their smooth rims like he was counting on an abacus.

Jim looked up from his inspection of his suddenly empty glass and grinned at the young navigator. “Pav,” Jim only called the kid that when he was well and thoroughly drunk. “Pav, we’ve got to get you laid, kid.”

Chekov’s eyes slid slowly away from the ceiling with all the careful grace of the inebriated and looked at the Captain. “Laid, Keptin?”

Jim nodded sagely and plunked his glass down on the table. Sulu startled in his sleep but quickly settled again into the puddle of drool his had made on the slick, black surface of the table. “Yup,” Jim stated purposefully. “’S not right for a kid as cute as you to be a virgin.”

McCoy expected Chekov to blush and stammer; to look away and try to steer the conversation away from himself. It’s what most sewenteen year old virgins would do. It’s embarrassing, after all, being called out in front of all and sundry. Chekov just pursed his lips and narrowed his eyes. McCoy was pretty sure it was supposed to be intimidating, or at the very least reproachful. It just came off as adorable and McCoy tried not to laugh.

“We should find you a pretty girl,” Jim went on, oblivious to Chekov’s glare. “Or a pretty boy. I’m not one to judge.”

McCoy snorted and it was Jim’s turn to glare. But the doctor had treated his promiscuous friend for 4 separate alien STD’s in the six months since their mission had started; Jim had no room to talk. “What do you say, Pav? Next time we’re on shore leave, we’ll take you out and get you thoroughly de-virginized. I’d try and find you someone on the ship, but that always ends up being messy. Very messy. You don’t want messy, believe me.”

Chekov just shook his head and smiled, a not altogether happy smile. McCoy watched him through the haze of alcohol that had blurred his eyes. “I am not a virgin, Keptin. There is no need to find me anyone.”

Kirk’s eyes widened, his mouth falling open in surprise. “But…you’re a seventeen year old whiz-kid that got recruited into the Academy before puberty. When the hell did you go getting yourself laid?”

Chekov sighed and sent the Captain a long-suffering look. “Whiz kid, yes. Priest…no. I have not been a virgin for a long time.”

Jim gaped for a few more seconds, then he grinned and reached across the table to clumsily smack Chekov on the shoulder, knocking over two glasses as he did. One rolled off the table and clattered to the floor, earning them all a glare from the sleepy looking bartender on the other side of the lounge. “You little animal you,” Jim laughed, settling back into his seat. “Well, spill the details!”

Chekov’s eyes widened and he looked away from the stupidly grinning Captain. ‘Ah, that was better,’ McCoy thought.

“Details, sir?” The kid asked, eyes shifting back and forth between the Captain and McCoy.

“Sh-eah! Details, Chekov! Was it a boy or a girl? Or a professor?” Jim’s eyebrows wiggled suggestively but in his drunken state they moved almost separately of each other, making them look more like break-dancing caterpillars. “Well, I suppose,” the oblivious Captain continued to himself. “Being a professor would still make them male or female. Unless it was that one Engineering professor from Altor VI. They don’t have genders. They can switch hit for whatever’s more convenient, which I think is pretty awesome. Was it the Engineering professor from Altor XI?”

Chekov glared again and shook his head, carefully placing the shot glass that was still in his hand next to the others on the table. He lined them up carefully so they created a tiny little see-through wall in front of him. “I do not wish to speak of it.”

“What?! Why not? Was it embarrassing? Did the little soldier go off early? Don’t be embarrassed, that happens to everyone. Well, not everyone. Sure as hell didn’t happen to me. Tell me what happened.”

Chekov bit at his bottom lip, looking all of twelve years old, and sent the inebriated Captain another apprehensive look. “I…”

McCoy stood abruptly, earning him a startled, deer-in-headlights look from the young Ensign. “To bed with you Jim. In fact, to bed with everyone. I may not be on shift but damn it I’m still a doctor, and it’s time I did my doctorly duties. I’d rather not have the lot of you keeling over from alcohol poisoning.”

Jim gave him a slightly cross-eyed look, mouth gaping soundlessly. He waved a blurry hand in Chekov’s general direction, clearly trying to convey that they weren’t done with their conversation, but the look of relief that had washed over Chekov’s face had cemented McCoy’s decision to end the night before they all regretted it. “Bed, Jim. If you don’t get fluids and sleep right now you’re gonna need a half dozen hypos in the morning just to be able to function.”

Jim paled and stood quickly on rather shaky legs. “We’re not done here,” he stated with all seriousness, one finger shaking awkwardly at Chekov.

McCoy growled and pushed Jim towards the door of the lounge. “Go to your room. I’ll check on you in a minute to make sure you haven’t drowned in your own vomit.”

Jim stuck his tongue out with a grin and shambled off towards the exit. McCoy sighed and turned back towards the table where the kid was dragging Sulu up into a sitting position. They both maneuvered the unconscious pilot so that he was standing, getting one limp arm over each of their shoulders. Sulu muttered something in what was either Japanese or Klingon and sagged in their hold as they started to walk.

“Thank you,” Chekov said quietly once they had reached the room he shared with Sulu and dumped the other man onto his bed.

McCoy grunted a reply, too far gone to worry about the Ensign now that he had gotten them both back to their room safely. He gave the pilot one last lookover, to make sure he wouldn’t drown himself in his sleep, and headed off to harass Jim. Maybe bring a few hypo sprays with him, just for the hell of it.

**********

If Doctor McCoy thought his troubles were over once he had passed out the appropriate hangover remedies the next day, he was wrong. Two days after their little celebration McCoy walked into his office at the beginning of his shift to find Chekov sitting in his chair making an elaborate model of the Enterprise out of paperclips. McCoy stopped in his tracks, looking up from his PADD to peer at the Ensign.

Chekov didn’t look up until McCoy cleared his throat. The boy startled at the noise, hands flailing in surprise and sending the model across the desk and down to the floor at McCoy’s feet. The doctor picked it up, placing the mangled pile of metal on his desk with the paperwork that Nurse Chapel had already brought in. Chekov looked down at the desk to avoid McCoy’s eyes, lips twisting in a half amused, half embarrassed smile.

“Kid, what are you doing here?”

The smile turned into a pinched frown and straight white teeth came out to bite at Chekov’s lower lip. “I...Nurse Chapel said I was getting in the way in the exam stations, so she gave me code to come in here.”

McCoy set the PADD down on his desk beside the flattened model and ran a hand over his face. “But why are you here? Are you sick? Or did you just come to pester my staff?”

“I am not sick!” Chekov said quickly, rising from McCoy’s desk chair, probably fearing a barrage of hypos. McCoy doesn’t know how he got the reputation as a hypospray wielding madman instead of the damn good doctor that he was, but he sure as hell wouldn’t bet against it being his supposed best friend’s fault. McCoy raised one eyebrow into a clearly questioning look and walked around to the other side of the desk to sit in the chair Chekov had just vacated.

“So you’re here to bug my staff then?”

“No!” Chekov had picked up the mangled paperclip disaster, but dropped it to the floor again. He bent down to retrieve it, head disappearing below the line of the desk before popping back into view once more. He blushed and set the mass of metal onto the desk. “I am not here to bug anyone. I am…I am hiding.”

McCoy felt a headache blossoming behind his eyes. It was going to be a long day. “What are you hiding from, and why are you doing it in my sick bay?”

McCoy looked up to see the Ensign biting at his lower lip, blue eyes darting around the room as if looking for an answer hidden among the shelves and sparse decorations. “I…am hiding from the Keptin. And I am doing it in your sick bay because I thought it was the only place he would not look for me.” Chekov looked up and grinned softly. “Even for what he wants from me, he will not come here.”

“You could just tell him,” McCoy suggested, knowing damn well what Jim wanted from the kid. Once Jim’s curiosity was peaked it was hard to distract him. Wasted or not, the good Captain most assuredly remembered Chekov’s confession two nights ago.

“I do not want to tell him.” Chekov had slipped into the chair that sat on the opposite side of McCoy’s desk and picked up a piece of scratch paper that had been wadded up and forgotten. Long fingers began carefully peeling at the edges, tearing off tiny, precise pieces and letting them flutter to his lap.

“Come on, kid. It can’t be that embarrassing. He’d never admit it, but I know a few stories about Jim that would knock his ego down a peg or two.” Chekov stared down at his lap but didn’t say anything. “Alright, have it your way. I’ll…talk to him about it, or something. Remind him that he’s still subject to sexual harassment rules, Captain or not.”

“No!” McCoy’s eyes widened at Chekov’s outburst. The Ensign blushed and set the mangled paper back on the table. He stood slowly and turned towards the door. “If you talk to him, it will only make him want to know more. He will forget soon. I will just…avoid him until then. I’m sorry for disturbing you.”

With that Chekov slipped out the door, leaving McCoy behind, irritated and confused. Today was going to be a very long day.

**********

Jim did not forget. The next day McCoy looked up from his reports when he heard a tentative knock on his door. Before he could answer the panel slid open and Chekov’s blonde head peeked inside. McCoy scowled and Chekov blushed, but he slipped inside anyway and sat down on the other side of the desk. Right around the time the kid started biting his lip and picking nervously at his pants McCoy sighed and turned back to his reports.

For the next week McCoy watched the Captain and the navigator run an odd sort of dance around each other. Jim had enough propriety to keep his curiosity off the bridge and out of earshot of their coworkers, but Chekov had still spent the majority of his free time hiding in McCoy’s office. McCoy had put him to work on the second day, filing reports into the computer to give Nurse Chapel a break – the first day had been nerve wracking, having the kid’s silent presence sitting across from him - and they had managed to create a quiet camaraderie over the next couple of days. McCoy had certainly learned more about Russia in the past week than he ever thought he would know. The kid didn’t know the meaning of the term ‘peaceful silence’.

But McCoy also knew that it couldn’t go on forever. Jim wasn’t going to let it drop, at least, not without someone’s interference and Chekov had been adamant that McCoy not say a word, but Chekov couldn’t hide in sickbay for the next 5 years. Sooner or later this thing was going to come to a head. McCoy just wasn’t sure how widely the fallout would spread.

**********

“So I hear that you’re not the sweet, innocent kid we all thought you were.”

McCoy was sitting in the nearly deserted mess hall when Sulu walked in and sat down next to Chekov at the next table over. Chekov’s eyes widened at his friend’s words and he turned to stare at Sulu, mouth hanging open in shock. “I…How did you…”

“You have me beat, that’s for sure,” Sulu went on, oblivious to the fear that had crept into his friend’s face. “I didn’t lose mine til I was eighteen. I was kind of a gangly klutz until I started learning the katana from my grandfather. So how’d it happen?”

“Chto za huy!” Pavel stood quickly, his chair skidding across the floor and landing with a crash. The sound attracted everyone’s attention, the few people in the room looking up from their late meals to watch as Chekov began pacing angrily. “Did the Keptin send you here?” The navigator demanded, his hands clenching into fists at his sides. His mouth curled up in a sneer and his chest rose and fell rapidly with angry breaths. “Why is this so fascinating to everyone? Why must everyone know about my sex life? You all have had sex. Why is it so strange that I have too? Why do you care?”

Sulu’s eyes went from shocked and confused to angry as Chekov’s rant stopped. When his young friend turned back to glare at him, fists landing heavily on his hips, Sulu stood and pushed his tray away carefully. “I just wanted to get to know you better.” With that he turned his back on his friend and walked out of the mess hall.

Chekov sighed, shoulders falling in defeat, his hands unclenching to hang limply at his sides. He glanced around the room to see the few people that were still there watching him intently.

McCoy rose from his own seat, the glare he sent around the room scattering the crew member’s attention back to their own business. “Come on, kid,” McCoy said, placing one hand on Chekov’s back as he slipped his medical bag over his shoulder. He steered him towards the exit that Sulu had just stormed out of. “Let’s go somewhere private.”

Another deep sigh came from the Ensign and he turned them toward the personal quarters when they left the mess hall. “We can go to my room. Hikaru always practices his fencing when he is angry.”

They made it back to Chekov’s room in an uncomfortable silence. Once inside Chekov slumped to the bed and lowered his head into his hands, long fingers digging into blonde curls. “I did not mean for this to happen,” he said, voice muffled into his chest. “I did not want anyone to know at all. Now, to keep my secret I hide from my own Keptin and my best friend is angry with me. This is not what I wanted.”

“Well, most of that you can blame on Jim. He’s usually at fault for the messes around here anyway.”

Chekov looked up from his hands, shaking his head. “He is a good Keptin. He just does not know when to quit.”

McCoy nodded sagely. He had spent 3 years chasing Jim around the academy and keeping his ass out of the fire for the shit he pulled. He knew well enough that his friend had a heart of gold and the common sense of a goldfish. “Ain’t that the truth. Listen, kid, I-”

“Pavel.”

“What?”

The Ensign looked up at McCoy for the first time that night and sighed. “My name is Pavel. Not ‘kid’. Pavel. It was my grandfather’s name. It is a good name. I wish people would use it more.”

McCoy nodded again, mouth twisting into a smile. “Alright, Pavel. I’m smart enough to figure out that your first time probably wasn’t very pleasant, which is where all this business started from. So tell me what happened and get it the hell off your chest.”

Chekov - Pavel - sighed and closed his eyes. His hands rested on his thighs, fingers digging into the dark fabric of his uniform pants. “I know what you are thinking,” he said slowly, eyes opening to stare down at the floor. “You think, poor little Pavel was taken advantage of. Poor little Pavel was too young, too naïve. You think I did not know what I was doing. But you are wrong.”

“So tell me what really happened.” McCoy pulled the chair over from the desk and settled down into it, staring fixedly at the Ensign.

Pavel smiled, a sad, lost sort of smile, but did not look up. “Yes. For you I will tell. But first I must tell you of Russia. Of my family.”

Another sigh from the navigator, a subtle shift on the bed. McCoy knew this wasn’t going to be quick, and probably wouldn’t be easy to hear. But he would keep quiet and let the kid, Pavel, do this his way.

“I had eight brothers and sisters, and I was in the middle. But…I did not fit. I was not old enough to do the things the older kids did, but was not like the little ones. I was…very lonely. My papa, he works all the time to provide for the family, and mama was so busy with the little ones. I tried to help, but I was no good. Was never good at anything but school. The other children made fun. They would steal my books and lock me in the closets. But the teachers, they always say how good I am. How smart. How much they like to have me in class. They tell me all the time how wonderful I am.

“Then, they do the tests at the school. I did well. My mama, she was very proud. She calls everyone, says how well I did. Says she’s so proud. Everyone was so happy. Then I get offer to go to Starfleet, to train for officer. My mama cried. She said I would do good things one day. That I would be better than anyone in my family. I wanted very much to make her happy.

“When I got to America, I thought, here I will fit. Here they will all be like me. But I was wrong. I was the youngest person to join the academy ever. For this I got my own room, because they worried I would not do well in the dorms with the others. With the adults. This made my classmates angry. They did not steal my books, but they were very good at ignoring me. They call me ‘kid’ and hate me because I am young.

“But the teachers tell me how smart I am, just like home. They talk to me like I am adult. They give me special lessons and praise my work.

“Then…it got harder. The work was harder, and I could not keep up. I work twice as hard. Ten times harder, so I can keep up. But I fall asleep in class and I fail the tests. My grades start to slip. My teachers, they start to say, he is too young. They start to look at me like the others do. Like I am not good enough. My mama says, maybe was not right to send you there. Maybe you’re not cut out for it. I work harder, to prove myself, but I cannot work and sleep. I needed…I needed to stay awake. To do the work and not sleep in class.

“One of my classmates, he says he can help. He says he has a pill that will let me stay awake. He says…first one is for free. My mama warned me about drugs. She told me they were bad, that you lose more than you gain. I knew this, but I had to stay awake. I had to prove myself. To show everyone that I was meant to be there. So I took the pill.

“I stay up all night and study, and in the morning I take the tests and do not fall asleep. I get highest grade in class and my teacher tells me how good I did; how smart I am. The man finds me again, says he can get more. I ask the price. There is always a price. High, he says, but it’s worth it. I paid his price.

“For a long time I take the pills and I pass the tests. My teachers no longer look at me like I am no good. They praise me and treat me like I am special, and my mama says she is proud. Then…”

Pavel stopped talking. His hands clenched in his lap and his teeth worried at his bottom lip. McCoy tried to catch his eye and found nothing but a deep blankness staring back at him.

“Pavel.” McCoy placed a careful hand on the boy’s shoulder, the other snapping long fingers in front of Pavel’s eyes. For a moment he barely moved except for the deep, even breaths that lifted his chest. Then his eyes focused and he looked over at McCoy, blushing a pale pink.

“I am sorry, Doctor. I will continue if you wish.”

McCoy nodded, squeezing his shoulder gently. Pavel unclenched his fists and sighed deeply. McCoy moved from his place in the chair to sit on the bed beside the Ensign. He couldn’t see into Pavel’s face this way, downturned as it was, but their shoulder’s brushed carefully together and Pavel relaxed slightly.

“One day…I cannot pay. I had spent all my money and had nothing left. I was afraid I would fail again. That I would be nothing. He said there were other ways to pay. I…I went with him that night, to a club. He took me in through the back, to a room with a…with a bed. A man came in and smiled at me. It was not a nice smile. I-I knew w-what he wanted. I t-tried to leave b-but he stopped me. He p-pushed me to the bed and…”

Pavel’s breath hitched and his eyes closed tightly against the tears that started to spill over, sliding down his pale cheeks in iridescent drops. McCoy placed a hand on his trembling back and the dam burst. Pavel buried his face in his hands and his whole body began to shake with the force of his sobs. McCoy wrapped his arms around him completely, pulling him into a tight embrace and Pavel latched onto him, one hand curling in McCoy’s shirt, the other still covering his face in shame. For a long time McCoy barely moved, simply held the boy close; no nonsense words of comfort or empty promises, just let him cry. He wondered if Pavel had ever told anyone about what had happened to him, or if he had let the memories of that night fester inside until they became a big, bleeding wound that wouldn’t close.

Eventually Pavel’s tears stopped and his breathing slowed back to normal. He sat up awkwardly, brushing the tear tracks from his face. McCoy moved slightly to give him some space but kept one hand firmly on his back, a gentle reminder that he wasn’t alone.

“It wasn’t your fault, Pavel,” he said, voice low in the sudden quiet.

Pavel sniffed and rubbed his nose against his sleeve. “Da. I know.”

“Then why-”

“It was my fault when I went back.”

It took every ounce of will the doctor had to not react. To not reach out and take Pavel by the collar and shake him, to not shout how could you, you’re better than that. To not start crying himself. Pavel kept talking and for the first time in years Leonard McCoy felt his heart keenly because it was breaking.

“I went back to him again and again, for many months. Always different men. I did many things that I am ashamed of. But I passed the tests. I took the pills and I passed and I paid his price. I had to. I had to pay.” Big blue eyes, shiny with unshed tears, turned to McCoy and he wanted nothing more than to wrap this kid up in his arms and never let go, never let the world get in again to put that hallow, broken look in eyes that were usually so bright and full of life. “I had to pass the tests. Don’t you see? I had to prove myself. To show them I belonged there. To show them I was good enough. I could not let the professors down. I could not let my family down. I had to pass. I had to.”

McCoy couldn’t take it anymore. He lifted one hand to Pavel’s face, brushing away the tears that had started to fall again. “Okay. Shh. Okay. I understand. It’s alright.” Pavel nodded and leaned into McCoy’s hand, seeking the comfort he had denied himself for so long. “What happened then, Pavel? Did you stop? Did you tell someone?”

Pavel shook his head and bit at his bottom lip, pulling away from the doctor’s touch. “I came here,” he said, smiling the first genuinely happy smile McCoy had seen on him since this whole thing had begun. “Head navigator to the Starfleet flagship. My mama is so proud. I call her every week and tell her of the missions. Of the planets we see and what I do. She tells me she could not ask for a better son.”

McCoy thought bitterly that she didn’t deserve a son like Pavel. A son that would sell his body and soul just to make her proud. She had spent years bragging about her genius son, but hadn’t cared enough to realize that he was slowly killing himself. “Pavel…” he didn’t want to ask this, didn’t really want to know, but he had gotten this far and hell if he was going to chicken out now. “The pills…those things are highly addictive. Did you…?”

Pavel stood up, not looking at the doctor as he moved to the chest at the end of his bed. He opened it up and started rummaging inside. When he found what he was looking for he returned to the bed but didn’t sit down. He stretched his hand out to the doctor and in his palm was a small, clear bottle, and in the bottle were several dozen tiny, white pills.

“If I do not take them my hands shake. I do not want them anymore. I hate them. But…my hands...”

McCoy reached out slowly and took the bottle out of Pavel’s hand. He didn’t look at it, didn’t give it a second thought. He wrapped his hand around the bottle, long, sure fingers covering it completely, and looked back up at the trembling Ensign. Pavel let out a soft, gasping sigh. After a moment he looked up into the doctor’s eyes. “I…I understand if you tell the Keptin. I know I should be court-martialed for this and I-”

“I’m not gonna tell, Pavel.”

“But…”

“We all make mistakes. And we all deserve a second chance. That’s what this place is. A second chance.” McCoy reached out and caught the cuff of Pavel’s sleeve, pulling him back down onto the bed. “I’m not going to tell on you. But…”

Pavel turned wide blue eyes to him, hope warring with fear in his face. “But?”

“But only if you accept my help to quit those things. It’s not gonna be easy.”

Pavel sighed and his body relaxed, free for the first time in years from the weight of his secrets. “I would like that very much.” McCoy reached out and gripped his shoulder, pulling him into another hug and Pavel sunk into it gratefully, wrapping his arms around the doctor’s waist and simply breathing.

End

Oh, wait. Did I set that up for a sequel? Why, yes, yes I did. Be looking for that...eventually.

To See That We Were - McCoy/Chekov

2009-08-12T12:27:03Z

Title: To See That We Were
Pairing: McCoy/Chekov
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: I only own them in my dreams, darlings. But that's okay, we have fun there.
Summary: Prompt fill for st_xi_kink here - At the end of the day, Bones is still a thirty something CMO sleeping with a seventeen year old genius. People are always going to have something to say about it - good or bad. A 5+1 fic.
Author's note: Kink meme has taken over my brain! Also, title from a poem by Jason Wesco, from the book Between The Letters.

To See That We Were

Five Times McCoy didn't give a damn what people thought...

Jim – “Pavel Chekov?” McCoy’s supposed best friend was sitting across from him, feet up on McCoy’s desk, uniform boots crinkling the day’s paperwork that McCoy had just finished, laughing his ass off. McCoy just scowled. He didn’t give a damn. The man could sit there and giggle like a schoolgirl all day and it didn’t matter one bit.

“Pavel Chekov?” Jim asked for the fifteenth time, one hand wiping at the tears that had leaked over his face. “Little Pavel Chekov? Mister ‘I can do zat’? With the accent and the curls and the big puppy dog eyes? Really, Bones?” He started laughing again, so hard that his feet slid off the desk and hit the floor with a thud, overbalancing him and sending him to the floor, still laughing.

“Damn it, Jim. Get the hell out of my office or I’m gonna go find a few of those hypos I’ve been keeping for you for a special occasion.”

Immediately Jim’s head popped up from below the lip of the desk, his eyes wide, but his shoulders still shaking with laughter. McCoy reached into his desk and Jim jumped to his feet, sauntering out of the office still laughing. Jim, for all McCoy was concerned, could laugh himself right out into the deep dark vacuum of space. McCoy knew this was only the start of it, but it didn’t matter. It had only been four days since Pavel Chekov had waltzed into his sickbay with all the enthusiasm and confidence of youth and kissed the unsuspecting doctor (who had been more than obliged to kiss him right back), but McCoy already knew the kid was worth it.

Spock – “Doctor, upon hearing of your liaison with young Ensign Chekov I took the liberty of reviewing Starfleet’s regulations on such matters, and wanted to inform you that, while there are no rules expressly forbidding such an occurrence, it would be prudent for you to know that relationships between the senior staff are highly frowned upon, for obvious reasons.”

McCoy took the time to count to ten in his head, breathing slowly while he did and resisting the urge to turn around and strangle the pointy-eared bastard. Then he did it again. In Russian...vosem, devyat, desyat*.

When he finally turned around he had somehow managed to find the facsimile of a smile. He had promised Jim he would play nice, after all. (Why Jim was allowed his uptight hobgoblin but McCoy couldn’t enjoy the company of one little Ensign was beyond him.)

“Thank you, Spock,” he said, smile disappearing as he turned back around and away from that eerie, blank look the Vulcan always wore. “I’ll be sure to keep that in mind.” When I’ve got my cock up the kid’s ass, he thought, as Spock walked away, apparently satisfied that McCoy was now well informed on his situation. But McCoy didn’t give a damn what the regulations said, or what Starfleet command would think of his ‘liaison’ with the barely legal navigator.

Besides, he had already looked it up himself, two weeks into this…whatever it was he had with Pavel. There wasn’t, technically, a damn thing anyone could do about it.

Uhura – “Do you really think this is wise, Leonard?” The Lieutenant asked in the mess hall one day, about two months into his relationship with Pavel. He had just caught a late lunch with his…boyfriend? Lover? Significant other? Whatever. – before Pavel had rushed off back to the science labs where he was helping Spock with an experiment that had taken up the majority of his attention for the past week.

Nyota had slipped into the spot at the table that the overly excited boy genius had vacated, her tone and expression showing nothing but honest concern. None of the amusement that some of the crew had shown, none of the speculation. None of the disgust. McCoy knew what it looked like. He didn’t give a damn. None of them knew what their relationship was like behind closed doors, in the privacy of their rooms. They could all go soak their heads.

Nyota, however, was honestly concerned, and he knew why. Pavel was too young. McCoy was too jaded. They were co-workers. They had nothing in common. Their relationship, when put under the microscope, was…illogical. (Ha. Let Spock get an earful of that.) It was, for all intents and purposes, doomed from the start, and Nyota knew better than anyone how hard it was to end a relationship like that with someone you had to see every day.

“No, it’s not ‘wise’,” McCoy said, standing up and leaving his half empty tray on the table. “It’s about as far from ‘wise’ as I’ve ever been. But I don’t give a damn.”

He’d apologize for his rudeness later - his mama had raised him to be a gentleman where women were concerned - but right now he didn’t need to have this conversation. Again. He wandered off to go sulk in his office. He didn’t want to go back to his empty room.

His ex-wife – “Really Leonard, it’s disgusting.” She had always said his name as if it tasted sour in her mouth. Like it was a curse she was trying to expel from her mind. “He’s closer to your daughter’s age than yours.” How she had found out about it he had no idea, but he had known from the start that she would eventually. He just hoped it would be a while longer. Say, when Pavel was twenty-five or so, not still in his teens.

“My lawyer will hear about this, Leonard,” Jocelyn said, familiar words that had become like a weapon over the years. Everything her lawyer ‘heard about’ was always with the intent to get more money out of him. And with his heart locked up in a box with the custody papers, it was a sharp weapon indeed. She dangled their daughter over his head like a bully teasing a starving dog with a porterhouse steak. But he’d be damned if he let her use Pavel against him.

“Tell your lawyer whatever you want, Joce, because I haven’t done a damn thing to be ashamed of. You’ll get your check on time just like always.” With that he ended communication, the look of surprise on her face almost worth the twisting in his gut.

His mama – “Well, Leo, you never did do things the way I expected.” His mother’s words were just as familiar as his ex’s, and they bounced off the mental shields he had erected against her always-slightly-disappointed tone long ago. “You’ll bring him to see me next time you’re in town.”

It was not a request but McCoy answered anyway. “Yes, ma’am.” His mother nodded and the screen went blank.

Pavel moved from where he had been standing, stock still in the corner, since Maribelle McCoy had made her inspection of him ten minutes ago. He didn’t say anything for a while, just leaned over to wrap his arms around McCoy’s shoulders, a smile blossoming on the teenagers lips when the doctor turned in the chair he had been occupying to bury his face in Pavel’s lean stomach.

After a while Pavel straightened and pulled McCoy into a standing position. “I think,” he said as he began to slowly pull McCoy’s shirt off. “That your mother vould get along vell with my mother.”

McCoy laughed and stepped away from Pavel long enough to pull his own shirt off, then he pulled the boy into a tight embraced and kissed him thoroughly. Now was not the time to be thinking of either of their mothers.

And the one time he cared immensely...

Joanna – “Daddy!” Joanna broke away from her mother’s restraining hand and ran to the open door of the shuttle craft where her father stood, grateful to be back on solid ground. He held out his arms as she launched herself at him and caught her mid leap, nearly tumbling them both to the ground. McCoy felt two strong, careful hands on his shoulders, keeping him from landing on his ass. He would have thanked Pavel, but he was too busy breathing in the scent of his daughter after a long year away. Video comms just weren’t the same as holding her in his arms.

After a minute she began to squirm and he released her gently to her feet and guided them both out of the doorway where they were holding up traffic. He took her hand and walked her to the side of the shuttle as the other passengers disembarked. He felt Pavel keep in step a few paces behind him and his stomach twisted into knots, threatening to send up what little he had eaten for breakfast that day. This…this mattered. Almost a year’s worth of fighting for their relationship, of ignoring the snide remarks and the nasty looks, of not giving a damn what anyone said, all came down to this. This meant everything.

“Jojo,” he said, stopping her at a bench beside the landing dock and pulling her to sit down by his side.

“Daddy, I’m too old for you to call me Jojo now,” she huffed, rolling her eyes at him. She got that from her mother.

McCoy glared and waggled a finger at her. “You’ll be too old when you’re a hundred and fifty.”

She laughed and grabbed his waving finger, kissing the tip before she released it. “You silly. You’ll be dead then.”

His mouth opened to protest but shut with a snap as he shook his head in disbelief. Ah the ever complex mind of youth. “Jojo, I want you to meet someone.”

“That boy back there?” she asked, pointing to where Pavel was waiting patiently a few yards away, leaning casually against the shuttlecraft and trying to not look anxious. McCoy’s stomach did a somersault when she called his lover a ‘boy’ and he wondered if it was too late to take this all back. To fly back to the Enterprise and put this off for another few years. Decades. Whatever.

He waved Pavel over and turned back to his daughter. “Yeah, honey. I want you to…umm…this is…I mean, Pavel is my…”

Pavel reached the bench and came to a stop, sliding gracefully to his knees in front of them on the red brick walkway. “Privet*. I am Pavel. I am a friend of your papa’s. I am very pleased to meet you.”

Joanna’s eyes grew wide and for a moment McCoy felt his heart sink into his feet. Then, “You’re Russian!”

The delighted squeal took them both by surprise and Pavel grinned happily. “Da*. I am from Russia. How did you know?”

McCoy snorted and Pavel sent him a tiny glare before turning his attention back to the smiling girl. “You sound just like my neighbor, Mr. Obolensky,” she said excitedly, bouncing in her seat. “He moved in last month. He’s from Moscow and he’s teaching me Russian. Menia zavut Joanna. Skolko vam let? Mne devyat' let*.”

Pavel laughed and clapped his hands. “Very good! You are better than your father and I have been teaching him for a year. And I am eighteen years old, thank you.”

“Are you staying with my dad? Can you teach me more?” Joanna reached out and tugged on one of Pavel’s curls, watching as it sprung back into place, and Pavel laughed.

“I would love to teach you.” Pavel grinned, first at Joanna, then at McCoy, and for the first time in almost a year McCoy felt like he could breathe.

End

*
…eight, nine, ten.
Hi.
Yes.
My name is Joanna. What is your age? I am nine years old.

Wait - Kirk/Spock

2009-07-16T08:27:24Z

Title: Wait (it sort of named itself, idk)
Pairing: Kirk/Spock
Rating:
Disclaimer: I only own them in my dreams, darlings. But that's okay, we have fun there.
Summary: Prompt fill for st_xi_kink here - Kirk/Spock 5 times Kirk accidently kissed Spock in the Vulcan sense with hand to hand touching, and the one time Spock kissed Kirk in the Earth way, with the mouth.
Author's note: My Supernatural muse and Torchwood muse hate me right now. But that's okay, because me and my new Star Trek XI muse are having fun. Here's another one folks. Off to work on the other 12 prompts that have inspired me. ~~I can haz my life back, please?~~

Wait

“Wait, you missed one.” Kirk picked the small glass chess piece off the floor – it may or may not have been his fault that it ended up there in the first place in a botched attempt to cheat during the last game which he had also been losing – and handed it to Spock as the Vulcan carefully placed the other pieces into the carrying case.

The first officer reached out to take the piece with the quirk of one perfect, upturned eyebrow and Kirk dropped it into his palm. As he pulled his hand away his fingers brushed over Spock’s and Spock’s hand jerked under his touch.

The chess piece fumbled, nearly dropping back to the ground before Spock recovered. He placed the piece in its proper spot and carefully dismantled the board, all the while ignoring Jim’s wide-eyed look of surprise. Jim had never seen his first officer do anything that was less than graceful, and he had certainly never seen that slight green tint to his sharp cheekbones before.

Spock nodded solemnly, lips twitching in the facsimile of a smile, and left with little more than a ‘goodnight Captain’.

---

“Vulcan’s cannot get intoxicated from the consumption of alcohol. Our bodies do not process the poison the same way Human bodies do. And even if we could, why anyone would desire to purposefully lose all sense of control as a means of recreation is beyond all logic.”

Kirk lifted one eyebrow in an intentional parody of his first officer’s normal incredulous look. “We’ll figure something out. Come on.”

The Captain reached out and grasped Spock’s hand in a tight hold that clearly stated ‘you’re going whether you like it or not’ and began to drag him towards the officer’s lounge. Spock’s hand tingled almost painfully from the contact, so much so that he suddenly found himself sitting at a table in the back corner of the bar on deck with the Captain, Doctor McCoy, and Lieutenant Sulu, with no recollection of how he got there.

The waiter placed a silver plate stacked with small, dark brown squares in front of Spock several tense minutes later.

“I’m a doctor, Jim, I need to know the biology of the people I’m taking care of,” was the good doctor’s explanation to the captain’s questioning stare. Jim grinned and Spock gladly bit into one of the bitter-sweet chocolates, his hand still tingling where it rested on the table beside Jim’s.

---

The mission went bad. They always went bad.

They were lying on the pad in the transporter room and they could hear noise all around them. People shouting, Scotty’s thick accent demanding order. Someone was screaming into the comm for medical. Kirk turned his head, the blood pounding in his ears, his vision fading in and out with the throbbing of his body.

Spock lay still - so damn still - beside him, his eyes closed softly. Green lines trailed down his temple onto the bright silver of the floor and his chest moved in a shallow, steady rhythm. Kirk reached out, hand trembling as his fingers brushed Spock’s, needing to feel the warmth of his body, to know he was alive. Spock’s dirt-stained fingers wrapped tightly around his own.

They stayed that way until Bones burst through the door shouting orders.

---

Kirk tried not to laugh, he really did, but he had never seen a funnier sight than his calm and stony-faced first officer wandering around the bridge with a small child resting happily on his hip babbling away in what was either a foreign language or no language at all. The child had become attached to the Vulcan the moment the refugees had boarded the ship and had, much to her mother’s dismay, taken to wandering the ship looking for Spock.

The little girl had slipped into the bridge with Chekov when the alpha shift had begun and immediately crawled into Spock’s lap at his station. Kirk suspected that his logical friend had taken a liking to the child himself, because it had been almost an hour before he had contacted the kid’s mother.

The poor woman had rushed to the bridge to retrieve the giggle ball of sticky mess, apologizing profusely as she popped out again. Spock raised one perfectly pointed eyebrow when Kirk tried to stifle his laughter.

“You have something, here.” Kirk reached out, rubbing at the spot of sticky red that had ended up on his first officer’s cheek. His thumb swept away the spot, pulling at the corner of Spock’s mouth.

Sulu coughed and Chekov giggled. Spock turned that same, alarming shade of green as Kirk turned away from him and headed back to his chair. Uhura just gave them both a speculative look.

---

The Vulcan ambassadors had been on the ship for a week. They were everything Kirk had expected. Logical, polite, cold. They caused little fuss and generally stayed away from everyone. They were transporting them from New Vulcan to Terra, for a congregation of the Federation elite.

Starfleet had thought the Enterprise would be the best ship for the job, for obvious reasons. Kirk wasn’t so sure.

Spock, his normally stoic and reserved commander, had become withdrawn and downright silent. No one else had noticed. His duties had been performed commendably and his demeanor to the crew and their guests had been cordial and polite as always.

But the small spark of happiness that had slowly crept into his eyes over the last months of their mission had dimmed into a tepid, quiet reservation. Kirk also saw the looks in the eyes of the ambassadors whenever they were forced to interact with Spock. He saw the thinly veiled disdain where there should have been gratitude. He saw the contempt where there should have been acceptance. It seems that, despite the sudden decrease in the Vulcan population, there was still no room for a half-breed.

Kirk found his first officer on the observation deck after half an hour of searching the old-fashioned way and a growled ‘find Commander Spock’ to the computer on the nearly empty bridge. He was alone, the couches and quiet corners that were normally filled with crewmembers on their down time were empty in what passed for night on a spaceship.

Spock stood at the far end of the large room, standing stiff and indifferent as he stared out into the slowly creeping expanse of stars. Kirk paused as he entered the room, briefly considering just leaving the Vulcan to his meditation, or whatever it was he did when he shut down like that.

Before he could turn to go he heard a deep, shuddering sigh and watched as Spock’s shoulders fell, as his back bent under the weight of his people and their condemnation. One pale hand came out to rest on the cold glass in front of him and Kirk’s feet moved without his permission.

He came to a stop beside his first officer and friend, and for once in his life he had nothing to say. They stood in silence for some time, the space between them charged, full of questions, full of anger, full of an unvoiced pain that had been lifelong.

After a while Spock’s shoulder’s straightened and the hard set to his mouth softened to his normal, calm expression. Kirk reached out and gently touched the fingers that were still pressed tightly to the window.

As he turned to go he saw Spock’s hand curl, long fingers tucking protectively into his palm.

---

They were on twenty-four hour shore leave at a station smack dab in the middle of nowhere. The station had your typical array of junk shops and dive bars. It also had many numerous and lonely men and women that were happy to hear all about the exploits of Captain James T. Kirk.

Kirk was currently regaling a gorgeous Orion woman and two very intriguing young men of unknown origin of their most recent adventure which involved monsoons, make-shirt rafts derived of leaves the size of shuttle craft, and a very angry native population of pygmies.

He had had maybe a few too many drinks, but it was nothing he couldn’t handle. He was still charming as hell and was certain that he would be going to go to bed with either the woman, or both of the men. Either one was fine with him.

He must have said something particularly funny, because the woman laughed loudly, placing one dark green hand over his on the bar. Suddenly he heard a deep growl come from behind him and he was spun around on his stool to face a very displeased Vulcan. And by displeased he means that Spock’s mouth was pulled down in a tight frown and his dark eyes were narrowed ever so slightly.

“Spock, what…?”

Before he could finish his question Spock had leaned down, big hands wrapping around his jaw as a hot mouth descended on his own. It took Kirk a moment to catch his bearings, but when Spock’s tongue darted out to lick at the tight seam of his lips he caught on and opened up, letting Spock into his mouth.

Kirk was vaguely aware of the angry huff coming from the place beside him where the Orion had been, but then Spock’s hands were sliding down to capture his own and he was being drug out of the bar and back toward the ship. He sure as hell wasn’t going to complain.

- Meagan

The Sanctity of Marriage (or, why Kirk never gets to make the decisions around here)

2009-06-27T08:35:41Z

Title: The Sanctity of Marriage (or, why Kirk never gets to make the decisions around here)
Pairing: Kirk/Spock, previous Spock/Uhura, just for right now and then they're getting it anulled and never speaking of this again Uhura/Sulu, McCoy/Chekov if you squint
Rating: PG
Warnings: Comedy? No really, that's a warning. I think this is a first for me. *runs back to her angst*
Disclaimer: They're afraid of the things I'd do to them if I owned them, so they keep running away when I come with my nets.
Summary: Inspired by this promt at the st_xi_kink "The crew beams down to a planet where the inhabitants refuse to negotiate with virgins. The catch? Virgin on this planet simply means anyone who has not yet been married. Cue group wedding/quick coupling for the sake of diplomacy, surprise divorcees ("Wait, when the hell were you married?"), and McCoy laughing his ass off at everyone else."

The Sanctity of Marriage (or, why Kirk never gets to make the decisions around here)

“I get Uhura! I’m the captain, damn it!”

“No, I get Uhuru, on account'a she doesn’t like you!”

“No one gets Uhura!” Lieutenant Uhura glared at the captain and the ship’s main engineer, hands on her hips, patented female glare firm on her downturned mouth. “This is ridiculous!”

“Ya have to ya bunch of whiney cry-babies, so quit your bitchin’,” McCoy grumbled from the other side of the room. It was damn well time to move on with this. “Just pick who you’re going to marry and let’s get on with it. I’d like these negotiations over sometime this millennium.”

“I guess the Lieutenant should be with Spock. All things considered,” the captain conceded. Uhura’s glare turned into a blush of embarrassment and Spock stood more stiffly than ever.

“That would be unwise.” “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

Kirk looked first to his second-in-command then at his chief communications officer, suspicion quirking up his eyebrows. “Why not?”

Spock muttered something intelligible and suddenly grew interested in the local potted flora, while Uhura stocked over to Sulu and tucked her arm into the slightly flustered pilot’s. “We broke up. That’s all you need to know.”

Kirk gaped at the apparently ex-couple. “Why did I not know this? I know everything that goes on in that ship. Why did I not know this!?”

“Jim, you know nothing about anything, now pick your damn partner,” Bones growled. This stopped being funny ten minutes into the argument about who got to marry who. “The ceremony starts in half an hour and you lot still need to get dressed.”

Scotty and Kirk exchanged quick looks then, in unison, shouted, “I get Chekov!”

Ensign Chekov giggled and sat down on the plush gold couch next to the doctor. “I do not need to marry. I already have.”

Six different looks of surprise (which meant little more than a twitch of one peaked brow from the Vulcan) turned to the young navigator. “Kid, you’ve been on the Enterprise since you were 17. When the hell did you get married?”

Chekov blushed and looked down at his hands. “When I was 16, in Russia. I went home for the holidays. She was childhood sweetheart.”

Kirk grinned and leaned over to slap the young Ensign on the shoulder. “You sly dog.”

Chekov shook his head sadly, but there was a smile on his lips. “We separated, when I joined the Enterprise. She did not want husband who was away so much.”

“I hear you there, kid.” Bone tipped his glass of Keroosian ale to Chekov’s divorce. Chekov grinned and drank from his own glass.

Kirk shook his head and turned back to the others. Sulu and Uhura were coordinating their outfits from the pile of ceremonial robes their hosts had deposited in the room with them after Kirk had come up with his brilliant plan. He glanced over to Scotty, then to the only other person in the room. Spock. Great.

He saw Scotty come to the same conclusion he had and moved without thinking, making a leaping dash to the other side of the room. His fingers connected with Spock’s uniformed arm milliseconds before Scotty’s did and he crowed in triumph. “Back to the ship for you Scotty!” he shouted, waving Spock’s arm like it was a trophy won at the end of a long race. Spock carefully extracted his appendage from the captain and took a discreet step back.

“I suggest either blue, or a color more neutral to our stations, Captain. I do not look good in yellow.”

Kirk rolled his eyes and waved Spock over to where their friends were getting dressed, taking a second to stare at the long, smooth line of Lieutenant Uhura’s back before she spun around to face him. She glared hotly as Sulu began doing up the buttons. To his right Scotty smacked his communicator on, barking a bitter ‘one to beam up’ into the air.

“Just wanted to have a little fun,” he grumbled as the waves of the translocater wrapped around him. “Best ale this side of Romulus. Next time I’m bringing Keenser.” He was still clutching his empty glass when he disappeared.

---

The ceremony had been brief but really quite lovely. Chekov had thrown flowers at the happy couples once they had been pronounced newly bonded by the Keroosian priest, grinning like a little boy and crying just a little. McCoy wrapped his arm around the kid’s shoulder, sighing, not quite in exasperation, when Chekov leaned into his embrace.

On the dias where the two couples stood with the priest Sulu leaned forward to place a kiss on Uhura’s cheek, which she kindly returned, linking her arm with his once more. And, never one to be outdone, Jim took Spock by the face and dragged the Vulcan into a brief, but not entirely chaste kiss. Spock folded his hands neatly behind his back when it was finished, but McCoy definitely saw his tongue snake out to lick across his own lips.

The Keroosian president walked up to the two couples and gave them hearty congratulations. He then turned to the small crowd that had witnesses the joining, grinning broadly. “On to the consummation ceremony!” he shouted, and the crowd cheered.

On the dias the four Starfleet officer’s looked shocked. McCoy just laughed and pulled Chekov away to go find more of the really very good ale.

Death is a Debt - Kirk/Spock

2009-06-21T12:23:41Z

Title: Death is a Debt
Pairing: Kirk/Spock, Spock/Uhura and Chekov/Sulu if you squint
Rating: PG
Warnings: Angst like woah people. Character death all over the damn place.
Disclaimer: I'd have to fight off several million Trekkies in order to have them for my own, and frankly I'm to damn tired.
Summary: Inspired by this promt -> "Death is a debt, to Nature due, which we have paid, and so must you" at the st_xi_kink meme, which has TAKEN OVER MY BRAIN!
Author's Notes: My very first Stark Trek 2009 (or Star Trek Reboot, or Star Trek XI, or nu!Trek, or whatever the hell you want to call it) fic. This fandom took over my brain fiercely and completely thanks to Zachary Quinto and Chris Pine. Be expecting more in future. P.S. Op, sorry for the crappy-ass title. It's 5 in the morning, I don't care to think hard enough to figure one out on my own.

People screamed all throughout the ship, crying out in pain or mourning the dead. On the bridge everything was deathly quiet. There were just three people there, the CMO, the First Officer, and the navigator. Pavel Chekov lay on the cold metal floor, pale and frightened, bleeding badly from the wounds on his chest. His head was propped carefully in Commander Spock’s lap and Doctor McCoy worked frantically to stop the bleeding. He injected the young ensign with hyposprays and pressed hard on the gaping wounds with his capable hands, but his blood spilled out over pale fingers and stained the silver floor.

Chekov gasped in shallow, pained breaths and he stared up at Spock; wide, innocent eyes filled with fear. They begged for help but Spock had none to give.

‘Get us out of here, Ensign,’ Spock had ordered over the sounds of battle and the creaking scream of their ship tearing under enemy fire. He had left them there, the young navigator and an alternate pilot whose name he did not know, before leaving the bridge, following the sounds to the heart of the attack. It had been an ambush, late on the gamma shift, nothing but a skeleton crew awake, no one prepared.

The battle had been fierce, and they had won, but at a high cost. The counts of wounded and dead were still pouring in as Doctor McCoy tried desperately to save Pavel’s life. “Did I-“ the quiet sound of Pavel’s voice startled Spock and the doctor; Spock looked down at the boy - not a boy any longer, Spock’s mind told him, it had been more than ten years since their time aboard the Enterprise began - and pressed a hand gently to his sweat-slick forehead. “Did I-do good?” Chekov asked, blood filling his mouth and pouring from the sides, mixing with the sweat and tears on his face.

Spock glanced quickly around the bridge, taking in the young pilot laying lifeless on the floor beside the pilot’s chair, the dead bodies of their attackers that littered the floor at the entrance. There were nearly a dozen of them, none more than a few meters inside the bridge, their blood mingling and flowing slick and black over the gleaming metal floor.

“Yes, Pavel,” Spock said quietly as McCoy sighed deeply and pulled his bloody hands from the navigator’s chest. “You did very well. Rest now.”

Pavel Chekov sighed, a soft, joyful smile pulling at his blood-stained lips. His eyes slipped closed and Spock gently stroked his forehead as the young navigator’s lungs ceased to function and his heart slowly stopped.

***

It was highly illogical. The natives called it the Di’coli Haat – the Flight of Dead. Spock had watched their Captain intently, trying to judge his state of mind as he allowed their pilot to slip into the seat of the Corandi speedship and prepare to fly through the crashing, violent storm that raged constantly in the deep canyon outside the capital city. Jim Kirk had pointedly ignored him, watching Hikaru Sulu with a look in his eyes that spoke of sadness, of grief.

They had been led to the air-field after the banquet held in their honor and Sulu had looked overjoyed at the prospect of attempting the flight when the Corandi ambassador had told them about the kamakazi test. Their pilot took off as the rest of the team watched, the sleek metal of the aircraft illuminating with each flash of blue lightning that crashed through the storm, and Spock realized that it had been a long time since Hikaru had looked anything like happy. It had been three years since Pavel’s death, and Hikaru had never been the same.

When the bright, burning orange light filled the canyon, the sound of crashing metal and burning fuel overpowering the deep sounds of thunder, Nyota began to cry, McCoy turned and walked away, and Jim stared quietly, stoically, into the raging storm. Spock stood silently beside him, ignoring the desperate apologies from the ambassador, and watched the orange light fade.

***

McCoy raged beside him, cursing and spitting pointless threats. Jim begged to take her place, hands reaching through the bars of their cage as if he could reach her by sheer will. And in their ears the comm’s buzzed with the static sound of futility, cut off from the ship, from any hope of rescue. Nyota Uhura watched them all, tears sliding down her face as she was marched slowly to the blood-stained alter. The tears were not for herself, but for them. Because they had to watch, because they would blame themselves when this was over, if any of them survived. Spock knew this because he knew her.

He knew she was strong and loving and good. She was the first person he had ever called friend.

Her eyes met his and for one moment he wished futilely that he knew now how to show her everything she was. How to tell her without words all the things she meant to him. Her eyes stayed on his as they strapped her to the stone alter. As they cut away her clothes and anointed her with oils. The ceremonial knife was placed at her breast and she smiled at him, and he knew that she knew.

***

Everyone knew that Scotty loved his ship. When the Captain tried to correct him, reminded him that it was in fact his ship, Scotty just smiled and said, you may tell her where to go, but it’s me she talks to, Captain. There had been rumors running through the crew for years that Mr. Scott had a far more…intimate relationship with the Enterprise than anyone wanted to think about.

“I can’t leave her, Captain. She’s not dead yet! Let me save her!”

The very walls were falling down around them, the metal creaking and groaning as the ship was hit time and again with enemy fire. The hull was torn open, the shields were long gone, and the engines had given their last to the extensive assault. Spock pulled roughly at Scotty’s arm, dragging him through the corridors to the evacuation ships. “There’s nothing left, Scotty,” Jim screamed from the other side of the struggling man, doing his best to keep the engineer from bolting back to the bowels of the ship. “We have to go.”

Jim shoved Scotty into a seat on one of the last remaining shuttlecrafts and slammed his hand against the door lock. “It’s just a ship, Scotty.”

When the Captain turned his back to find a seat of his own Scotty bolted to his feet and ran to the door. “Open for me, love,” he whispered into the console. The door slid open and the engineer ran, into the burning, twisted ship. The door slammed closed again just as Jim turned to follow.

As the shuttlecraft flew off into the darkness, racing after the dozen other ships that held the remainder of their battered crew, Spock and Jim watched the Enterprise fall apart into a mass of glittering metal bits that would float forever in the vastness of space.

***

Jim wasn’t here and that didn’t seem right. He was out, somewhere, searching. Always searching for a cure. But it was too late now and he wasn’t here at the end. Doctor McCoy coughed, a hard, wheezing sound, and he doubled over in pain. His daughter rushed to his side, careful hands at his back to help him. She was crying quietly, tears wetting her pale skin. When the coughs ended there was blood on the pristinely white sheets. Spock reached a hand out, to comfort or give support or to say all the things he thought he should.

McCoy slapped his hand away and glared. “Don’t try that now, ya hobgoblin. We may be damn different in a lot of ways, but neither of us has ever had a use for sentimentality.” He coughed again, gasping into his hands when his lungs refused to pull in enough air.

The doctor laughed, a frail sound. “Spent my whole life saving people. Poking ‘em, and jabbing ‘em. Sticking ‘em with hyposprays. And now I can’t save myself.”

“Jim should be here,” Spock said, unable to look the doctor in the eyes.

“You tell that bastard…” A deep sigh, and Spock looked up to see tears gleaming trails down McCoy’s face. “You tell him I loved every damn minute of it.”

Spock nodded. He had no words, but he knew McCoy wouldn’t want them anyway.

***

“How long, Spock?” Jim lay against Spock’s chest, his heart beating its slow rhythm against Spock’s ribs. They were on a soft lounge chair outside their home, looking up at the dark, red sky of the Vulcan colony planet. His hand was fragile in Spock’s, the skin thin and dry, covered in faded scars and agelines.

“Sixty-eight years,” Spock said, kissing Jim’s temple softly. “Eight months, twelve days, fourteen hours since we met.”

“Who would have thought it would end like this?” The stars had begun to slip into the darkness and Spock looked for all the ones they had been to together.

“Not I, t’hy’la.” He pulled Jim closer, felt the breath in his lungs and the gentle pulse in his chest. “Not I.”

***

They called him Ambassador now, they called him a hero. They said he had changed the very face of the universe. They said that he was a legend. There were statues erected with his visage and his name was in books of history.

Spock watched the stars as they flew by in their bright white streaks, and he waited for the end.

Conversations With An Angel - Dean, Castiel

2009-03-30T08:59:34Z

Author's Notes: An odd little thing I first wrote ages ago when Castiel first took over my brain and made me see life outside Sam/Dean, the sneaky little bastard. Not even 300 words and a bit of an odd style. I was experimenting.

Do you know where angels go when they die, Dean?

“I...”

We become human.

“Human? Anna talked about it like it was a punishment; banishment for your sins.”

For some. For others it is...a second chance.

“Why tell me this?”

I have known loss.

“I…”

There was another. An angel, like me. A warrior. We fought side by side in a battle that raged outside of time itself. And I...loved him. In my own fashion.

“Him?”

I loved his single-minded devotion to those he claimed as his own. I loved his passion for the work we did; the lives we saved. And then he died. I watched them rip his light away and there was nothing I could do to stop it.

“I don't...”

I searched for him throughout history. I searched everywhere for the human form that housed the soul I had loved. But for millenia I couldn't find him. You see, Dean...even the very best of us fall. And when I finally found him it was in the last place I expected. The last place he ever deserved.

“But you found him.”

Yes.

“What happened?”

---

Blue eyes, so full of sorrow, had turned to look at him, made him wonder if that was how he looked to the people around him. If his grief radiated so plainly to a world that had no fucking clue. He didn't remember, came the last, ragged words from the angel that wasn't supposed to feel.

Dean had been left alone with a fluttering of wings and an ache deep in his chest.

To Hear The Angels Cry - Dean/Sam, Castiel

2009-01-10T21:19:20Z

Title: To Hear The Angels Cry
Pairing: established Sam/Dean (barely hinted at for this part), will be Dean/Castiel and Dean/Sam/Castiel (yeah, you read that right)
Rating: PG-13 for this part due to semi-graphic/disturbing images (rating will go up)
Disclaimer: Apparently I was a bad girl, because Santa didn't leave them under my tree. Maybe next year.
Summary: The angels were fighting all around them; waging a war no mortal man could see. Every war has it's casualties.

To Hear The Angels Cry

It's cold. A bone deep--soul deep--cold that fills all the spaces inside him that have been torn open. He doesn't register the darkness any more; doesn't feel the pain. He can see them still, and hear their laughter and the threats they make. He knows what they are doing to the vessel, knows they will take this to the end, until there is nothing left of him. But all he can feel is the unending cold.

----------

Dean woke to the sound of fluttering wings and a sudden presence at the end of his bed. He groaned and curled deeper into the pillow, willing his friendly neighborhood angel to just go away. The deep, throbbing bruises left over from their last hunt ached with every movement and all he wanted to do was sleep until he felt whole again. He didn’t feel like dealing with the apocalypse today.

The angel said nothing, allowing Dean his pretense of sleep for a few minutes.

‘I don’t sleep,’ Castiel had said once, when Dean had asked him why he watched him at night. ‘It...fascinates me.’

Over the past few months Dean and Sam had grown used to the angel’s odd, sometimes innocent, behavioral quirks. Sam hadn’t even stirred beside him in the bed when the angel appeared. Castiel’s presence had become familiar, if not comfortable over the last few months. Dean was just drifting back into his dreams when a voice he didn't recognize said, rather melodramatically, “Dean Winchester, I have a message for you.”

Dean’s hand curled around the hilt of his knife, his feet hitting the floor at the same time, and his body moved instinctively into a protective crouch. The movement woke Sam. The click of Sam’s gun barrel resonated over the sound of rustling cloth as the brothers stood together to face the tall, pale man that stared at them stoically from the end of the bed.

“Who are you?” Sam demanded, the gun pointed at the intruder over Dean’s shoulder.

The man blinked; that blank, depthless stare they had been so used to on Castiel unnerved them now. “I am Ambriel,” he said, his voice rumbling quietly through the room, powerful and ancient and almost-soothing. But it was also flat and unnerving; it made their skin crawl with caution. “I have come with a message for Dean. Another Seal has been found.”

Sam’s gun lowered slightly and Dean’s grip on his knife slackened but didn’t drop. “Where’s Castiel?”

The angel blinked twice slowly. “He is…unavailable,” he finally said, evasive and emotionless, hiding the truth behind his cryptic words with all the flat arrogance of the heavenly hosts.

“Unavailable?” Dean asked, voice disbelieving as his feet moved restlessly on the stained carpet. They had never dealt with any angel other than Castiel and his sometime-shadow, the surly and prejudiced Uriel. Dean didn’t like that others were suddenly popping out of the woodworks. With all the angels asking favors of him, he would never get any sleep.

“He’s an angel,” Sam said, tossing the gun to the bedside table and falling gracelessly to sit on the bed. “How can he be unavailable?”

The angle turned dark, narrowed eyes to Sam, his voice lowering down into an almost-threat as he said, “Only the heavenly Father is omnipotent.”

“Yeah, so where is he?” Dean intersected, drawing the angel’s attention away from his brother. He had seen enough of Uriel’s contempt for Sam to know that other angels probably felt the same way.

Something almost like regret filled the angel’s eyes. Dean heard the subtle rustle of wings, as if the angel were shifting uncomfortably. “He is…missing.”

Sam’s head shot up from where he had been sleepily contemplating the carpet at his feet and Dean’s hand tightened on the knife he still held. “What do you mean ‘missing’?” Dean asked, in his father's voice; the one that brooked no argument.

The angel sighed, rushed and impatient. The angels, in all their heavenly superiority, never understood how a mortal man could dare to question them, to tell them no.

“You are...not what I was expecting.” Castiel's words, during one of their first few meetings, when they sat in an uneasy truce, and the world hadn't quite fallen down around their ears yet.

“Castiel was taken in battle. We don’t know where he is. Now, the message-”

“Taken? What, by demons?” Dean demanded. He had never given much thought to what the angels did when they weren't pestering him, or threatening Sam. Castiel said that they could die, but how do you kill an angel? The thought made the room suddenly feel small.

Ambriel sighed again, but hesitated, eyes shifting for answers as if he had already said too much. Dean leaned forward as the angel muttered something. Dean caught the last few words and they sounded like ‘want you to know’.

“Yes,” he finally said. “Castiel was taken by a demon. Or, several, we don't know. The message, Dean-”

“Forget your damn message,” Dean growled. “The only one of you assholes I’m dealing with is Castiel.”

“Castiel is-”

“Missing. Yeah, so you said. Maybe you should go find him.” Anger was boiling up to the surface of Dean's skin, making his body flush and his hands ache to strike out at something, to wrap tight around vulnerable flesh and squeeze until he couldn't anymore. It wasn't fucking fair. None of it was.

“We have neither the time nor the power to spend searching for our fallen brethren.”

“So you’re just going to abandon him?” Sam asked, disgusted and confusion coloring his voice, pulling a sneer to lips that used to smile more. “Your ‘brother’. You’ll just let him rot in whatever hellhole the demons have taken him to?”

“We can’t-”

“Get out,” Dean broke in, turning his back on the angel as he picked up a bag from the floor. The contents were upended over the bed, clattering to the rumpled and worn surface, and he began digging through the pile of clothes and weapons.

“The message-”

“Get. Out.” Dean grated again as he pulled on a pair of jeans. Sam had followed his example and was quickly dressing on the other side of the room, keeping one eye on the angel as they prepared for...something. What his brother was doing, Sam had no idea, but he wasn't doing it alone.

The angel moved toward Dean, hand reaching out, a threat. Dean straightened and looked up at him, all challenge and angry confidence. The angel sneered and disappeared in a flutter of wings.

----------

“Dean, what are you-” Sam asked.

“Get Ruby,” Dean interrupted. His hands quickly pulled out shotgun pellets full of salt from their belongings, and he piled bottles of holy water and books of prayer onto the table in the kitchenette.

“What?”

“Call her, summon her, or whatever it is you do, but get her here. If the demons have an angel, word will have gotten out. Someone will know where he is. We have to...” Dean's body went still and his lungs emptied in a shuddering breath. Ragged fingernails caked with dirt dug into the gold-gilt letters that spelled out 'Holy Bible' on worn leather.

“Okay,” Sam said, then he left his brother to go summon Ruby. They had an angel to rescue.

----------

Cold had given way to fire; burning hot and white, turning to ash whatever shreds had been left of his soul.

The fire roared through his mind, covering the screams that tore loose from the vessel's throat, and tongues of flame burned brands onto vulnerable flesh. The fire consumed him completely and he wondered where he would go when he died.

----------

Six days. Six days was too damn long and they knew it. They had no idea how long Castiel had been missing to begin with, no other angels had come forward with information or assignments, and they knew full well how time was relative when dealing with demons. Six days could have been a lifetime.

In six days they had found little more than a rumor, but it was all they had. And it was information bought with a price. The body Ruby had found had suffered too much damage. She had abandoned it before they had started their mad drive and they hadn’t heard from her since. Dean thought it a sick irony that a demon had been more help finding the missing angel of the Lord than his own heavenly brothers.

Sam stopped at the edge of the ancient forest, hands gripping the wheel tightly. “This is it,” he said. “The cemetery is about a two hour drive through there.”

Dean clutched a photocopied map in one hand and Ruby’s knife in the other. ‘There will be protection,’ Ruby had said, before she fled the torn and bleeding body, leaving it to become a Jane Doe once again. ‘They won’t give him up without a fight.’

But they had known that from the start. They had known before they had started looking; known when they first caught wind of the nearly forgotten Civil war cemetery hidden at the heart of one of Tennessee’s national reserves. This wasn't going to be easy.

The engine revved to life and they headed into the forest.

----------

Dean Winchester couldn't for the life of him tell you why he was here. Why his shoulder burned from the long, bleeding gashes the hellhound had torn into his skin. Why his head ached from where it had been bashed against the wall by the possessed body of a goliath. Why his throat was hoarse from shouting exorcisms over the squealing sounds the dog had made as Sam hacked at its invisible body with the knife.

He should be in bed catching up on the lifetime's worth of sleep his body was still owed. He should be happy that he had one less angel breathing down his neck, expecting him to save the whole God-damn world.

Instead he was here, in some freezing hole of a crypt in the middle of fuck-all Tennessee, Sam's breath noisy and labored in his ear and his own blood mixing with the days-old stains on the stone floor. Four bodies lay, dead or unconscious they weren't quite sure, in a circle around them and the air was filled with the smell of sulfur the hellhound had left behind.

In the middle of the room was a rough wooden cross, and on it hung a man, bound and bleeding, like some gruesome effigy to the God the demons had turned their backs on; the God Dean's own guardian angel had placed so much faith in.

Well, look where that had got him.

----------

“Jesus Christ.”

Sam's mind echoed his brother's words for the prayer they were. He wanted to recoil from the sight in front of him; deny the horrific image of one of God's own angels strung up as a bloody sacrifice.

The cross hung from the ceiling on two thick chains attached to either end of the cross-bar so that it could be easily released then risen again. Castiel's dark head hung limply, hiding his face, and blood still dripped down the course wood to pool darkly on the ground below. Pale, naked flesh was torn and bruised and his wrists and ankles were bound to the cross with blood-coated barbed wire, the wicked points cutting into delicate skin. Sam could barely see the thin wisps of breath that clouded in the frigid air beneath the angels mouth.

Dean stood rooted where he was, barely breathing himself. An image of his brother, strung up and bleeding, filled Sam's mind like an avalanche. He wondered again what Dean had suffered during those long years in hell; wondered if he had strung souls up on a cross and made them bleed.

Sam grabbed a chair that had toppled into a corner during the fight and set it down beneath the cross, hands reaching to lift the limp head as he climbed up on it. Castiel gasped at his touch, his whole body convulsing in pain.

Wide eyes blinked heavily, straining to focus, first on the blood covered floor over Sam's shoulder then up, onto Dean's face. Tears spilled over, sliding down bruised skin, carving pink trails in the blood and running across Sam's hands.

“Dean, get the chain,” Sam ordered. Dean moved slowly, eyes still locked on Castiel's, as if he couldn't bear to look away, reaching for the lever that would release the cross.

It came down quickly, a sudden burden in Sam's arms. Castiel moaned as the movement jarred his wounded body. Dean reached out to help and they carefully laid the cross out on the blood-stained floor; the angel's eyes stared hollowly up at the ceiling as Dean knelt beside him.

“Cas,” Dean said quietly, hands gentle at the hard line of the angel's jaw, pulling his attention back.

Sam's throat tightened, knowing this tactic well. He felt the ghost of his brother’s hand on his own face, years of hurts caused by monsters and madmen and everything in between. Distract, reassure, get past the pain, that's what Dean was doing. Tell Castiel with touch and eyes that he was safe now, he had nothing to fear anymore.

They'd spent too much of their lives playing that game.

Castiel turned slowly to look at Dean again, blue eyes still crying tears no angel should be able to shed. His mouth moved silently around words that he couldn't get to come out and his whole body had begun to tremble with shock.

Finally the words came, strung together and too quiet for Sam to hear. Sam wasn't sure he was meant to hear. All of Castiel's attention was focused on Dean. Dean leaned forward, listening, then bowed his head and shut his eyes as if to block out the truth of what the angel had told him.

Sam turned and walked back to the steep stone stairs at the front of the crypt.

----------

He hadn't wanted to hear, not really, because he already knew. Had known since the moment he had laid eyes on Castiel, after the dust had cleared and the demons were banished back to hell.

How else could they have done it? How else could they have reduced this powerful being--a being that could traipse into the very depths of hell for one lost soul--to nothing more than a broken mess of blood and tears. How else could they have made him so much - less?

“They took it,” came the broken words from Castiel's dry, cracked lips. “They took it. They took it.” With the sound of Sam's slow steps up the stairs Castiel turned away again. His blue eyes closed in pain as great, wracking sobs tore from his throat and Dean knew. The demons had stolen his Grace.

This diminished creature before him, that had once filled Dean with so much awe and fear, was now utterly human.

----------

Even the fire had died out into nothing; washed away in a flood of emerald waters and leaving behind a numbness that left him blissfully unaware. The numbness was good. The numbness meant he couldn't feel that deep, damaged place inside him that had once held something so precious.

The ache of that deep pit had threatened to undo him, but now...he felt nothing. That was good.

----------

Castiel could feel Dean’s soothing hands on his enflamed skin, could hear Sam’s low murmur as they made plans to remove him from this dark prison. But his body felt twisted in an all-consuming pain and his soul cried out to a God that had turned His back on him.

As they cut the wire around his wrists, releasing him from the once-worshipped cross, his mind crashed into a senseless darkness and he wished that they had just let him die.

TBC...

- Meagan

Extreme Behavior - Sam/Dean

2008-08-03T01:08:39Z

Title: Extreme Behavior
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Rating: R
Disclaimer: Santa says I can't have them until I promise to play nicely. Damn it.
Summary: A look at the 'Stanford years', based on the album 'Extreme Behavior' by Hinder.
Author's Notes: When I first got Hinder's album 'Extreme Behavior' I found myself seeing angsty, wincesty connotations to almost every single song. Thus was born this fic. Instead of a 'song-fic' it is an 'album-fic'. Each separate section represents a song from the album (done in chronological order and everything), with the passage from the song that most represents the part, preceding it. I hope this works as well as I thought it did! :)

Extreme Behavior

Let’s go home and get stoned
We could end up makin’ love instead of misery
Go home and get stoned
Cause the sex is so much better when you're mad at me

You shudder and gasp as Sam pushes into you, hard and unforgiving. It had been like this for months now. The strangled push and pull that your relationship has become. You would spend days dancing around each other. Pushing nerves, trying to make the other break. Sam would yell and Dad wouldn’t be around and you were left to wonder when it had all gone wrong. Then one of you would snap and it would all end in this.

It had all become bruised hips and swollen mouths. Red marks in the shape of fingers and teeth.

It was rough fingers and harsh breath. Too hard thrusts and stifled gasps of pleasure/pain. It was unspoken words that said everything you couldn’t.

There was nothing left of love in moments like this. It was anger and pain and betrayal. It was goodbye.

Why'd you go and break what's already broken
I try to take a breath but I'm already choking
How long till this goes away
I try to remember to forget you
But I break down every time I do

You had tried so damn hard to keep what was left of your family together. To keep your father alive. To keep Sam happy. You had been everything you could be to them, given everything you had in yourself to give; but you had always known it wasn‘t enough.

Sam was gone now and you knew, you knew, that he was never coming back. And your father was sliding further and further away, getting lost in his obsession. You felt like you were breaking. Cracking open a little more every day, just waiting for the final blow that would shatter you to bits.

Days pass into weeks and months and Sam doesn’t come back, just like you knew he wouldn’t. But that doesn’t stop you from expecting to see him. From looking for him behind every motel door, in every cheap diner that you stop at to eat your silent meals.

You expect to see those big puppy eyes and that crooked smile, telling you it was all a joke. But all you find are dark rooms and nameless faces that blow by in a haze.

In the winding down hours
I let your heart down again
(What did I do to make a scene so gory)
(I'm no better than the ones before me)
Old habits die hard
I always end up hating the end

2 AM and you know you shouldn’t knock on the door that stood so accusingly in front of you. You always knew, but that's never stopped you. Once you got to this point, the point where you could practically feel Sam and you had to be closer to him--to see him, to touch him--at that point you could never turn away.

A knock on the door, muffled voices inside. Sam answers, a textbook in one hand, and baulks.

‘Dean…’

‘Just let me in, Sammy.’ The alcohol is clear in your voice. You always sound just a little more country when you’re drunk.

‘Go home, Dean.’ Stern. Insistent. So grown up.

You just laugh. Home. Home was the memories of a woman long dead. Home was the father that had forgotten what that word meant. Home was the brother that had abandoned you for better things.

Sam sighs and rubs at his forehead. There are dark circles under his eyes and his fingers are stained with ink. ‘You’re car then, Dean. Sleep it off in your car and come see me when you’re sober.’

You can hear the pain in Sam’s voice, the desperation, so you nod and turn away, force your body to walk away when inside you’re screaming. I don’t want to be alone.

‘Dean…’ You don’t turn around at Sam’s soft call. Can’t. If you do you’ll never turn away again.

‘You’re my brother. I… It’s not about you.’

Words you’ve heard a thousand times. You nod again and keep walking.

There's nothing good about goodbye
I could swear I saw you cry
I always knew you'd wind up falling harder
There's nothing good about goodbye
Just say goodbye

Sam kisses you like he thinks it will be the last time. He always does. Pressed up against a wall in the darkness behind another nameless bar. Pinned down to Sam’s too-small bed, wrists bruising under Sam’s hands. And you let him; take what he gives and tries to give back what Sam asks for, begs for, with mouth and hands and harsh breath in your ear.

But you can tell that it’s never enough. It’s never what Sam’s looking for. Because you both know that come morning you will be gone. Not because you want to be, but because Sam needs you to be. Needs you to not be there, ruining the illusion of normal that he has tried so hard to build.

You know it is just that. An illusion; a dreamscape that wouldn’t hold up against the reality of your lives. But you also know that, for some reason you can’t explain, Sam needs that illusion. Needs to pretend and fake his way through the real world, if only to prove that he can.

It doesn’t stop him from kissing bruises into your skin every time you’re there.

I don't wanna know it's over
So save your goodbye kiss
I don't wanna know it's over
Cause ignorance is bliss

These visits never go the way you expect them to. The problem is, you still see little Sammy in your mind. The shy little boy that clutched your hand so tightly the first day of school. The wide-eyed puppy that worshiped his big brother.

Now your little Sammy is a hot-shot college student. Ivy-league and everything; too good for his big brother who had never even graduated high-school. He’s always tense when you’re there. He doesn’t smile as big and his laugh is fake.

You know this. Can feel it in your brother whenever you’re there. That part of Sam that wants to pull away, pretend you aren’t there. Put on the mask and be this person, this lie, that he wants so badly.

But you can’t stay away. Can’t walk away and pretend like Sam isn’t there anymore. So you come and you follow Sam out to the bars, out with his friends, to the library if that’s where Sam wants to go. You drink quietly while Sam plays in the real world. Whisper quiet words in the night while you brother sleeps, reminding Sam of what the two of you used to have.

And you try not to see the look in Sam’s eyes that says I don’t want you here.

I really miss your hair in my face
And the way your innocence tastes
And I think you should know this
You deserve much better than me

You can’t help but remember all those dark nights spent hushing Sam’s sharp cries with your mouth as your father slept in the next room. Digging your fingers into unruly hair while the windows in the Impala fogged, hiding you from the world.

You remember bitten-red lips and bruises that matched your fingers. Sam’s soft smile as you lay breathless and satisfied after. You remember laughter and love and warm summer nights when it was just the two of you. Just Sam and Dean, when nothing else mattered.

You remember that you were perfect together.

You also remember Sam walking away while you drank and conned and flirted with the local girls. You remember nights coming home smelling like someone else; Sam’s thin, silent mouth as you walked into the bathroom without a word. You remember tears and harsh words and doors slamming shut to block out the anger and pain.

You remember that you were never quite good enough.

She’s perfect. Watching them unseen from across the dark bar, you know that this girl is special to Sam. Blonde and petite, she’s everything Sam had ever wanted. She’s gentle and sweet, quiet as she wraps her arm around his waist and leans into his body. She’s perfect.

She’s everything you’re not.

She said nice to meet you
But she didn't tell me her name
With red lipstick and velvet boots
This bitch just blew me away

You were drunk and she was willing. Blood red lips and tiny black dress, she slipped her key into your hand and walked away, knowing you would follow.

It's brutal. Bruising and shattered as you push her up against the wall and fuck her hard.

But you look away from eyes that aren’t green enough, bitten red lips that are the wrong shape. The sharp cries that fill your ears are too high and your hands hold wrists that are too small, too delicate. You bruise soft skin and softer curves that just don’t feel right under your fingers. Wonder if Sam felt that way about the girl he goes home to every night.

She bites your shoulder hard enough to bruise and her red nails leave trails of blood down your back. When you call out Sam’s name she just laughs and rides you harder.

It's really good to hear your voice saying my name
It sounds so sweet
Coming from the lips of an angel
Hearing those words it makes me weak
And I never want to say goodbye

You play the message over and over again, hoping that maybe this time it will be different. That this time it won’t break your heart. The words slide through you, tearing you apart, like it was that day all over again. That day that Sam turned his back on you, swearing to never come home.

Dean… don’t come again. Please. I… I need you to not come again.

Sam knew just how to cut to the heart of you. Always had. He knew that you would do what he asked. That this time, this choked plea, this whispered word of need, would make you stay away. Because you always take care of Sam. Always give him what he needs. And Sam knew it.

The phone closes, cold and uncaring in your hand, then it’s flying across the room, shattering into pieces against the wall, the sound masking your stifled sob.

If it’s what Sammy needs, then it’s what he’ll get.

She was so adored by everyone
When it came to looks she was next to none
But loved partying and having too much fun
Then she hooked up with the wrong someone

You had heard him say that name before. Dean.

Heard it one night on the phone, listening silently on the other line. I need you not to come again. Heard it whispered into your hair at night like you couldn't hear, like he didn't even know he had said it.

You had always known it was just another part of his past, that part of himself that he never spoke about, that he shut away so tightly you knew you would never see it. You had come to accept that long ago, because you loved him completely, and if these secrets were necessary to keep him, well you were okay with that.

But you had never, not in your darkest dreams, thought that those secrets would be laid out before you like this.

'This is my brother...Dean.'

Five little words that had shattered your whole world.

Brother. Dean was his brother.

You had picked all the pieces up, standing there quietly as they argued, and tried to put them all back together again. But you weren't quite sure they fit right anymore and as he had walked away from you that night you had seen it in his eyes. That truth that had been there all along. You were never really part of his world, were never meant to be there.

And somehow you knew, as the door shut behind the man you loved and you were left all alone, that nothing would ever be the same again.

Now that you're gone I'm wasting away
The life has been siphoned right out of my veins
If I could go back in time
I'd say those three words
I shoulda woulda coulda said it back to you

You watch Sam now, all the time. Partly because you’re just glad he’s back, but mostly because you’re afraid of what will happen if you look away for too long. You can still smell the smoke on him, can still see the betrayal in his eyes that was there as you dragged him away from the woman he loved.

He wasn’t like your father; he had no children to live for. He had wanted to die that day and you had denied him. Now he lived only to kill the creature that had ruined his life again.

But you can’t help being glad you had taken him away. Can’t help being glad that you had been there to drag him from the fire; again. He’s your brother. Your life. Even if he had spent the last four years ignoring your existence you still needed him loved him more than you should.

If only you had told him that before. If only you had said something, anything, all those years ago when he had looked up at you from under those stupid bangs, big eyes so earnest and young, and asked you to go with him.

But you had just looked away, got back in your car and drove in the other direction as the words turned sour on your tongue and the feel of his mouth on yours turned into nothing but a broken memory.

So you watch him, trying to find the boy he had been. The man he had become. You watch him while he sleeps and cries out his lover’s name in the dark. You watch him while he hunts; while he becomes the killer he never was before.

You don't know your little brother any more.

END

- Meagan

you used to love to dance - Jack/Ianto

2008-03-09T21:32:32Z

Title: you used to love to dance
Pairing: Jack/Ianto
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Not mine, but oh how I wish they were.
Summary: “See, I thought you did it because you wanted to dance with me. But then you left, after that song ended, and you haven't spoken to me since.”
Author's Notes: Yeah, so everyone did one, which means so did I. Whatever. A coda to 2.09. (Not a happy piece, for all those wishing we'd just give this a rest.) Title taken from the Melissa Ethridge song of the same name.

you used to love to dance

“You mind telling me what that was all about tonight?”

Jack sat, leaning against Owen's desk, watching Ianto work. The others had gone, Gwen to her honeymoon, Tosh and Owen to their respective flats, and that left him alone at the Hub with Ianto, like always.

Ianto shuffled a few papers into place and turned off a few miscellaneous items that had been left on in their haste get to the wedding. Finally he stood up, hands on his hips and turned to Jack, looking at him for the first time since they had left the hotel. “What do you mean?” he asked, his face carefully blank, like always.

It drove Jack crazy, that neutral mask Ianto wore so well. It hid him so completely, in a way Jack had never been able to crack. That face had kept a cyberwoman hidden for months, had kept Ianto's interest in Jack a secret for even longer, and even now Jack couldn't tell if Ianto truly didn't know what he meant or if he was just being infuriating.

Jack sighed and pushed away from Owen's desk, slowly making his way over to where Ianto stood so stoically. “Earlier tonight,” he said, “at the reception. When you asked me to dance.”

He stopped inches away from Ianto, voice pitched low, nothing but the buzz of the Hub between them. “See, I thought you did it because you wanted to dance with me.”

And still nothing from those blank eyes that hid so many secrets, those eyes that Jack had seen light up with laughter and pleasure. He wanted to see that now, wanted the answer to the question that had been burning him all night to be something happy, just this once. He knew it wouldn't be.

“But then you left, after that song ended, and you haven't spoken to me since.”

Ianto looked at him a moment longer then turned away, bending down to pick up the garbage bag at his feet like Jack wasn't standing there, hurt and angry and confused. “I didn't do it because I wanted to dance with you,” he said, as if the words meant nothing. As if they didn't signal the beginning of a very important conversation.

Jack sighed and followed him, noting the stiff shoulders and carefully paced stride. He was angry, Jack knew now; his body always said so much more than his face. “Then why?”

More garbage went into the bag, more humming machines beeped themselves into silence. “She should have been dancing with Rhys, not you. It was inappropriate.”

“It's a tradition to dance with the bride,” Jack argued, still following doggedly, determined to play this out to the end. He wasn't going to let Ianto run, not this time.

“Not while staring at each other like that, Jack. People were starting to talk. I thought I'd do the bride a favor and not let rumors like that ruin her wedding day. It was bad enough as is.”

“Ianto, we weren't-”

Ianto threw the garbage bag to the ground and turned around suddenly, startling Jack. And there it was; finally unconstrained, the anger radiated out of every line of Ianto's body. It was on his face and in the way his hands clenched so tightly. It was in the hitch of his breath and in those stormy blue eyes. But beneath all that, beneath the seething anger, was something else, something far more vulnerable, something sad.

“You just don't get it, do you?” he asked, his voice reaching that dangerous, low pitch that meant he was truly upset. That voice always made Jack want to find whoever had mussed his nearly-unflappable receptionist and beat the daylights out of them for it. The problem was, most of the time when Ianto sounded like that, it was because of Jack.

“Neither of you get it. You and Gwen.” Ianto began pacing, angry strides that carried him back and forth across the hub while Jack just stood and watched, not knowing what else he could do. “But everyone else does, Jack. Everyone else sees it! Rhys sees it! But he married her anyway, and Gwen's so bloody selfish she just let him. She shouldn't be with him, Jack. Not when she's in love with you. And I...”

All of a sudden Ianto deflated, anger washing away to leave behind a sad, exhausted man that could do nothing more but stare at his feet in shame. “I can't be your consolation prize anymore, Jack. I can't be the one you run to when no one else is there. I won't.”

Ianto finally looked up at him and Jack was pretty sure his heart broke all over again. Those beautiful blue eyes were shining with tears that slowly slid down Ianto's face. He looked resigned. He looked heartbroken. He looked like he had those days and weeks after Lisa had died. Like he had before Jack swooped in to fix him, to take the pain away.

And now here he was, putting it all back again.

“Ianto,” Jack whispered, wishing that one word could say everything he couldn't. He knew it didn't.

Jack reached out to brush the tears away, expecting Ianto to pull away. Instead he leaned into Jack's hand, his breath hitching in his chest, and for a moment, just one small moment, Jack thought he might not have ruined this after all. He thought there was still hope that he could salvage this beautiful, broken thing they had together.

But then...

“Goodnight, sir,” Ianto whispered, and then he slowly walked away.

Jack could have caught him. Could have turned him around and drawn him back, begged and pleaded and explained. The night could have ended with them tangled in his bedsheets, listening to the gentle hum of the Hub in stasis like they had so many nights before.

But Jack knew that sooner or later this thing between them, it would end in tears again, and he couldn't stand it. Couldn't stand the thought of doing this night, this moment, all over again. Maybe it was better that he loose them both today. Cut all ties, the way it should be. So for entirely selfish reasons, and oh how he hated himself for that, he let Ianto go.

And for the first time since he had realized that he was the only living thing on that desolate spacestation, he felt really, truly alone.

END

- Meagan

as you pray (in your darkness) - Jack/Ianto

2008-02-29T22:57:26Z

Title: as you pray in your darkness
Pairing: Jack/Ianto (but kind of only in passing. one little comment. but it's there!)
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer:
Summary: I... have no idea how to summarize this. Really I don't. Sorry.
Author's Notes: This is kind of an expiriment in writing. It's rather different and, uh, oh yeah, here there be angst! And also some disturbing imagery. You are warned. (Title taken from Melissa Ethridge's song 'Silent Legacy'.)

as you pray (in your darkness)

Just another case, another lost soul vomited out of the rift, quick and easy. Just find it, bring it in, try and send it home. Who knew it would run. Who knew it would have such great defenses.

You chased it down, caught it on the rooftop. Why was it always the roof? Tried to talk to it, explain, you can't be here, we'll send you home. It wouldn't listen, wouldn't calm down. Jack got frustrated, wanted to go home. It was wet and cold, rain pouring in buckets, was supposed to be your night off. Pulled a gun, get down on the ground, we'll do this the hard way.

Then a flash of light, orange glow that you all knew was wrong, very wrong, and then the screams.

Nothing had ever hurt so bad, the sound of those screams. Agony pulled from burning lips, Jack falling, crumbling to the ground, flames tearing those horrible screams out into the night.

And then the worst thing, the very worst thing. The flames died.

Washed away by the pouring rain, didn't finish the job, didn't kill him. The flames fizzled out and all that was left was the sick sick smell of burnt flesh and those terrifying screams.

Then running, four sets of feet pounding across wet roof tar to the twisted body on the ground. Couldn't move fast enough, couldn't reach him quick enough. Falling beside him, reaching out, but couldn't touch, couldn't comfort, didn't know what to do.

It was too much, too horrible, something this horrible couldn't be real, but none of you were waking and you didn't know what to do. Wide blue eyes stared at the stars and black, charred lips whimpered in agony. Help me, he said, but there were no words, just those horrible sounds.

Owen did the only thing he could do, syringe pulled out of somewhere, meant for emergencies, the last resort, but it was all you had. Silver glint of metal sliding into tortured flesh and then the sounds stopped, the blue blue eyes roll back so all you see is white and you still didn't know what to do.

Got him back to the car, back to the hub, didn't know how, couldn't remember. Just remembered crackling skin and Tosh heaving into the gutter. Back in the sick-bay now, white sheets covering up all that blackened skin, and voices murmuring, what do we do?

Voices saying, he'll be okay, he's Jack.

Voices saying, what if he's not? What if he doesn't heal?

Voices saying, he heals when he dies.

Voices saying, he's not dead though.

You sit beside him, have nothing to say to the voices, wonder how this could be real. You want to touch, want to fix him, but you're too afraid. Can only see black skin, layers of flesh peeling away, dead and dying. Black mouth almost gone, burnt away. Eyes wide open, not seeing, won't close because the skin is stuck, burnt together and it makes you sick.

You don't want to know this face, don't want to remember. You want to see pink, wet lips, smiling, laughing, sucking you off while you try not to scream in ecstasy. You want to see smooth skin, and soft hair, and everything he's not anymore. You close your eyes, try to remember, but can't, can only see flashes of orange and sick sick black.

Hours pass, you still don't know what to do. No one leaves, can't, they fall asleep in fitful piles, nightmares creeping in behind closed eyes, but you can't sleep so you watch him all night.

When morning comes you don't know, outside's blocked away, a different world. A world where Jack is smiling and flirting and not lying in a bed where he's not-quite-dead but nowhere near alive. The other's wake, too many dreams of flashing orange lights, but still you don't know what to do. Walk around like zombies, watching Jack, cleaning what's already clean, ignore the alarms when something comes through the rift.

Then he wakes, a small whimper, gains your attention, breath held, waiting, turns into an agonized scream when it all come crashing back to him. The sound hurts so much it makes you sick, but you can't do a god damned thing, just watch as he screams and screams.

Gwen runs, can't take the sound, and Tosh buries her face in Owen's shoulder. Help him, you say. Make it stop.

He moves like a toy soldier, stiff, just following orders, from you now because Jack just screams. Another syringe, clear liquid flooding Jack's system and the noise stops. Won't last long, Owen says. He'll wake again.

Don't say anything, you know it's true, don't want to admit it, just stare down at Jack, adjust the damp cloth over his wide open eyes and wipe away the tears from black, crackling skin.

It happens again and again. Days pass, blurs of nothing and heart wrenching noise. Jack just sleeps and screams and breaks your heart. You're all dead inside, watching him, waiting, always waiting for the screams to come again. Can't stand it any more. Just wish he had died. Why hadn't he died?

Haven't slept in days, can't stop seeing burning flesh and too wide blue eyes. See it in the air now, like some monster thing looming over all of you, crushing and suffocating, pulling the life out of you.

Hours since the last dose and you know he'll wake soon, know you'll hear the screams that will try to shatter you again, and you can't take it. Can't take the sound, and can't take knowing how much he hurts. Why hadn't he just died?

Looming over him, finger's brushing black and dying skin, you hear them screaming at you but can't stop. The gun is cold, pressed into cold skin, and you know it'll be quick. Burst his heart and then he'll come back, whole and alive and the screaming will stop.

Nagging voices in your head, sounds like the others, sounds like them shouting, and you're not sure it isn't, nothing makes sense right now, but you have to do this, you shout back. Have to. You have to stop the screams.

What if he doesn't come back? That voice in your head.

What if he's not immortal?

What if he only has so many chances?

What if, what if, what if?

That voice, screaming at you like Jack does every time he wakes. But you have to. You have to.

Gun-shot's louder than the screams and no one moves. There's no splatter of blood, too close, too personal, just a trickle of blood over dead skin, and you're running. Running for the bathroom and you barely make it, purge your stomach of all the coffee you've taken in in the last four days, nothing else inside.

Doesn't stop there, keep retching until your whole body aches like your heart does, and the tears start to fall.

You don't hear him come in, can't sense him like you usually do, still think he's screaming, dying.

He wraps you up in his arms, holds you tight, kisses away the tears. You touch him everywhere, feel smooth, pale skin and plump lips that kiss your fingers as they pass. Feel baby soft hair and long eyelashes. Feel him whole and alive and his voice is a whisper into your hair.

Thank you, he says. And the screaming stops.

END

- Meagan

untitled - Sam/Dean

2007-11-16T11:18:24Z

Title: untitled
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Rating: R
Disclaimer: These boys wouldn't want to belong to me.
Summary: Birthday fic for my dearest plutogirl10. There's no plot, just 380 words of schmoopy sex.

It wasn’t like this often, this slow, sweet sharing of pleasure. These moments of time where they could stop running, stop hiding from the world and each other and just be. It was normally a harsh meeting of desperate need after a close call or a failed case. A need to remind themselves that they were still here, still together, still going on.

But sometimes, when all the walls fell and they were able to forget the monsters and the secrets and the darkness looming over them, it could be like this.

It could be the soft, slow slide of callused fingertips over freckled skin and years-old scars. The low words whispered into parted lips; promises and prayers spoken in the quiet moments between gasping cries of pleasure. They could have gentle fingers grasping for each other on the cracked leather of the old couch and careful kisses over straining, sweat-slick shoulders.

Sam pressed Dean into the couch, kissing the trembling back that arched up into him as he moved slowly inside his brother’s body. Hands found each other on the soft leather, fingers curling together and gripping tighter with each careful thrust, and Dean’s soft, panting breaths were lost in the crackling hiss of the fire.

Soft heat burned across their skin, the flickering warmth casting a golden light over the room and chasing away the shadows. Sam’s large hand slid over Dean’s hip, drawing him up and back; pulling him closer and pushing in deeper until Dean’s whole body coiled tight and he came with a soft cry.

Warm liquid spilled over Sam’s fingers and Dean collapsed to the couch in a sated heap, a small smile turning up the corners of his mouth as Sam followed with a soft grunt muted in Dean’s shoulder.

They shifted and wiggled until they were both as comfortable as possible, long limbs folded into too small a space but both too tired to move. Sam kissed the corner of Dean’s mouth and Dean grunted a response, already drifting into sleep. Sam smiled and wrapped his arms around his brother, taking advantage of this rare, compliant Dean, one hand settling over his heart.

It was just them in moments like this, just the two of them; still here, still together, still going on.

END

- Meagan

Why? - JC/Justin

2007-06-18T09:32:53Z

Title: Why?
Pairing: JC/Justin
Rating: G
Warnings: none
Disclaimer: Apparently JC's life belongs to Jive. If he wants to belong to someone who loves him and respects him the way he deserves I'm more than willing to offer my services. And Justin has apparently sold his soul to the devil. (I'm not bitter. Really.)
Summary: Prompt #80: Why?. Because none of us understand. (My response to the news that JC's second album may never see the light of day.)
Author's Notes: The angst. Oh the angst.

Why?

Justin walked through the door and pocketed the key he had taken from under the potted plant on the porch. He had lost his copy; been too long since he used it. He glanced into the living room on his way passed and stopped to look at the jumbled mess on the floor.

Blank space was left on top of the mantle where awards had once sat in sardonic pride. He walked around the couch to find the tragic sight that lay in pieces on the floor. Bent and lifeless moonmen lay like war casualties between the broken bits of once shining records. Silver and gold pieces of a man’s dream lying forgotten on the floor.

A crash resounded through the house, shattering the too-still silence that had crept over the cold walls.

Justin turned away from the wreckage in the living room and slowly followed the fractured sounds of distorted music. The noise grew louder as he neared the studio that took up nearly a third of the second floor. The door was open and the dismal, garbled music wailed out into the hallway. There was another crash and the music stopped, cut off like the final breath of a dying man.

Justin walked through the door, said nothing as JC threw a microphone at the wall. A hole was left behind; plaster cracking out into a mangled spider web. Records lay strewn across the floor in a jumbled mess, pieces ground into the carpeted floor. Multi-colored wires snaked across the pieces and tangled in knots around music stands and the shattered wooden spikes of a guitar. A chair hung in a stagnant limbo halfway between the main room and the recording booth, wheels spinning silently. Shattered glass littered the floor, glinting off florescent lights and casting sparkling pinpricks over the massacre.

Justin watched in silence as the remainder of JC’s studio was torn to pieces bit by bit. Hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment was methodically ripped apart and cast in tatters to the floor, the sounds of cracking metal and shattering glass drowning out the noise of Justin’s thoughts.

He had no right to interfere in JC’s grief. He didn’t know what he was going through.

When the soundboard started to spark, its wires pulled out in a jumbled mess like the twisted guts of some dying creature, Justin finally stepped in. He wrapped his hands around JC’s wrists and the other man immediately turned on him, sheets of half-written music fluttering to the floor as his fists began to pound at Justin’s chest.

He didn’t move to stop him, just let JC beat out his anger as wracking sobs replaced the discordant sounds of the ruined studio. When exhaustion set in JC collapsed, like a puppet with its strings cut, bearing them both to the ground.

JC’s arms wrapped around Justin’s neck and his tear-wet face left damp patches on Justin’s neck. “It’s not fair,” he sobbed into Justin’s skin. “It’s not fair.”

Justin just pulled him closer, held him tighter, and didn’t say a thing. He had no right, after all.

JC had given up everything for him. He had sacrificed his dream, his music, for Justin and done it gladly.

When the record executives had told him that they would be pushing Justin on their second album he had nodded and smiled proudly at him. When Lance asked why he didn’t fight for his solos JC just shrugged. When Joey said he should try to push his own songs JC had smiled and said he didn’t care. And when Chris had glowered and accused Justin of abandoning them all JC had looked at him quietly and said ‘I’m proud of you’.

He had given up everything so Justin could live his dream and had never asked for anything in return. And now Justin’s third album was getting ready to launch and JC had been pushed to the side like the runt of the litter; unwanted because he didn’t shine enough.

What could Justin ever say to that? So he just wrapped his arms around JC’s waist and mourned silently for the broken man in his arms.

END

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- Meagan

Give Me Strength - Sam/Dean

2007-04-16T22:12:57Z

Title: Give Me Strength
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Rating: R
Warnings: mentions of torture, graphic imagery, and character death (sort of)
Disclaimer: I know nothing! Nothing I tell you!
Summary: From the deep shadows on the other side of the room came the quiet, brusque question, “Can I have him, Dean?” Sometimes the best ideas, turn into your biggest mistakes.
Author's Notes: So, I finished this sucker approximately three months ago, but for some reason I just couldn't bring myself to post it. Might have something to do with the fact that writing it was one of the most emotinal experiences I've ever had when it came to my work. *shrugs* Anywhoo, it's here for you now, and I would like to thank my dearest, dearest plutogirl10 for holding my hand while I wrote it and tell me that I'm wonderful. I don't know what I'd do without you, darling!

Give Me Strength

It was supposed to be the perfect spell. A way to ensure that no one could steal Sam away from him. A simple incantation, a small tattoo, and no one could take Sam without his permission. And the same went for him; no one could take him anywhere unless Sam let them.

And it had worked.

The Demon had found them, holed up in a rundown shack in the middle-of-nowhere New Jersey, recovering from a hunt gone bad. Dean had fought with all his strength but had still failed, knocked unconscious and screaming Sam’s name as the darkness claimed him and the Demon turned to his brother.

But when he woke it was to gentle fingers in his hair, and worried green eyes that shone too-wet in the pale candlelight. Dean had gasped Sam’s name, eyes filled with confusion and fear, and Sam had simply pulled one bloodied, trembling hand to the small tattoo, giving his brother a shaky smile when Dean’s fingers tightened around the pale, ink-stained skin of his hip.

Two years passed and there was no sign of the Demon. Not a whisper that it still haunted the world; that is still sought them.

They began to think that maybe it had given up, that they were safe; as safe as they could be. Dean finally stopped fearing that he would be left all alone, no one there to care if he lived or died, and Sam told him with every touch and every look that he wasn’t leaving, this was his life and he wanted it.

They settled into a rhythm. They hunted at night and during the day they learned how to love each other. As brother’s, a lover’s, as more.

But they forgot the most important lesson their father had taught them, after ‘family comes first’. The one that had left bruises and drawn blood every time they forgot. Never let your guard down.

It had been two years since they had seen it, and they let it walk quietly into their room.

Dean woke to the feeling of a foreign presence, his long-honed skills waking him from the dredges of sleep like a gunshot in the silence. He was standing next to the bed in a moment, knife in hand and poised protectively over his still sleeping brother.

From the deep shadows on the other side of the room came the quiet, brusque question, “Can I have him, Dean?”

Dean reeled back in surprise, unprepared for the fact that the demon knew. But he snarled into the darkness, an unwavering ‘No’, ready to fight with his last breath. Because the spell kept the Demon from taking Sam from him, but it couldn’t stop it from killing him.

“I wouldn’t kill him, Dean,” the Demon said, stepping out of the darkness, its yellow eyes gleaming in the pale neon glow of the street sign. “I need him.”

Dean gripped the knife harder and shifted closer to Sam. “You can’t have him,” he hissed, a triumphant smile on his face. “Not ever.”

An ugly, twisted smirk slid across the Demon’s blood red lips. The room filled with sick laughter and still Sam slept on. “Then I’ll take you both.”

And before Dean could move, before he could breathe, the room disappeared and for a long time all he knew was the dark.

***

Days. It had been days; years; lifetimes since the moment the demon had walked back into their lives. Dean doesn’t remember the outside world. Doesn’t remember where he came from, or why he’s here. He only knows his name because the Demon won’t. stop. talking.

“Do you see him, Dean?” the Demon asks, yellow eyes breaking through the shadows, claiming Dean’s mind until it was all he could see. “Do you see what he has become? He could have led my army, Dean. He could have been a king. And now look at him.”

Him. Sam. His sweet, innocent, beautiful baby brother. Dean has seen too much since they came here.

They are chained to the walls. Dark, cold, wet stone at their backs; heavy, jagged chains around their wrists. It has been too long, in this darkness and cold, and all Dean remembers is Sam’s pain.

They have hurt him. Tortured him. Ruined him since they got here. His baby brother. His life. Dean has heard every scream, watched every shudder of pain that has run through Sam’s body. Sometimes he can’t even see what they’re doing to him. All he knows is that Sam screams for him and he can’t move.

But they haven’t touched him; not once in all this time. No, he had been left to watch, to hear, to know.

He has screamed. Raged. Begged. Torn at the chains that bound him until his wrists ran red with blood; crimson rivers dripping down his arms and across his shoulders, bone showing through beneath the cold metal because he tried. so. hard. But it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t nearly enough.

His brother’s screams still echo through the room, through Dean’s soul, though Sam does nothing but sway limply in his chains now. Dean is exhausted, body weary, wanting to give up the fight; but still he pulls at his chains, trying to reach Sam. Trying to protect him, but he can’t.

The Demon walks over to where his little brother hangs, lifeless and shaking. A wave of his hand and Sam is falling, like a puppet with its strings cut; falling to the dirty floor stained with his blood.

The Demon kicks him; sneers. “Crawl to him, Sam. Crawl to your brother. Show him what you’ve become.”

Dean watches him, so still on the unforgiving floor, and too much time passes between one moment and the next. The world shrinks down until all it contains is Sam, broken and dying. Nothing but ragged breath and bloody skin.

Then Sam rises to his hands and knees, unsteady, his body shaking, fingers clenching into the bloodstained ground. His head lifts slowly, slowly, dull eyes rising to Dean’s face but not meeting. Looking away. Painful, broken; fear and shame written across his bruised and bloody face.

‘Sam,’ Dean thinks. And then Sam’s eyes move, shift to meet his and focus too slowly. Sam looks at him for the first time in days and everything turns ice cold and broken. Sam is gone. His brother lover bestfriend wholefuckingworld is gone and he will never be back.

Dean wants to scream. He wants to rage and fight and bring the whole fucking world down with him. But all he can do is hang in his chains, blood running down his arms, the world gone from beneath his feet.

Sam’s mouth moves in silent words. Breathless pleasprayersscreams of Dean Dean Dean Dean. Blood runs in rivers off his body, pooling at his hands and knees, hemorrhaging the life and strength out of him.

One hand shifts, shakes just above the ground and falls back, inches ahead. He is crawling. Crawling across the dirty, bloody, black ground, life and soul gone and all he knows is Dean and that Dean can make it better. So he crawls.

Dean’s whole body screams at him as Sam fights to reach him, telling him to move damn it, do something, help him. But it has been screaming that for days and he can’t. He fucking can’t do anything but watch and wait as each painful, shattered moment brings Sam closer, drains his strength, steals the last of everything that had been good in the world.

His beautiful, strong, perfect baby brother crawls across the floor, slowly, so fucking slowly. Wet, rattling breaths and the scrape of Sam’s knees across the floor are the only sound. Nothing exists but Sam and Dean and the chains that hold him so far away.

He gets so close, so fucking close. ‘Dean,’ Sam whispers, wet and thick, blood dripping from his bruised lips and mixing with the crimson stains on his hands. One hand reaches out to Dean, desperate and shaking, needing his big brother to make it all okay.

Eternity passes between one step and the next and then Sam is falling, defeated. Lost.

Dean’s own voice echoes through the room, through his head, through the whole fucking universe as Sam’s eyes fall away. Sam’s name screams through the room, rips from Dean’s throat until it tears away the world and all he is left with is his voice and the taste of blood in his throat.

***

Dean wakes with a gasp, a scream catching in his throat. He wakes reaching for Sam and he finds him, sleeping soundly beside him, right where he should be. His hands run over Sam’s body, looking for the blood, looking for the wounds that he had seen etched into his brother’s skin.

But Sam is whole; healthy and deeply asleep, a small smile on his face.

Dean takes a few deep breaths, laughs quietly to himself. A dream. It had all been a terrible, terrible dream. He can still feel the bone-deep ache left in his body from fighting the chains; can feel his throat, raw and painful from screaming Sam’s name into the dark.

He moves to lie back down beside Sam, willing the images from his mind, when he hears a voice. That same, taunting, infuriating voice that wouldn’t stop talking to him in his nightmare.

“Can I have him now, Dean?” the voice asks, oil-sweet and knowing.

Dean jumps from the bed, knife in hand and… no no no, this isn’t right. It was all a dream. Please tell me it was just a dream.

The Demon steps out of the darkness, yellow eyes glowing in the half light of the moon. Its blood red lips lift up in a smirk and Dean feels something warm and wet dripping from his fingertips.

His hands rise, clutching tightly to the knife still cradled in his palm. But the blade is stained red; crimson gleaming on bright silver. His hands are covered in the slick blood that is seeping from his ruined wrists; he can see white bone gleaming in the moonlight beneath the red.

Terrified eyes turn to Sam and he can see so much blood; can see closed eyes go still and his breath stop. He blinks and the blood is gone. All that lies in the bed is his sweet, innocent baby brother--his life--perfect as he always was, sleeping soundly.

“Can I have him now, Dean?” The Demon asks again, breath ghosting across Dean’s cheek, the ache in his body turning to a mind numbing pain.

Dean’s knees hit the floor but he doesn’t feel it. Doesn’t know anything but Sam. His brother, lover, best friend. His whole world. “Yes,” he whispers into the darkness. And before he can move, before he can breathe, the world goes dark. But he is still there, in the rundown motel room, staring at the bed, their bed, and Sam is gone.

END

- Meagan

Denial, Comfort Me - Sam/Dean

2007-01-27T05:43:49Z

Title: Denial, Comfort Me
Pairing: John!centric fic, Sam/Dean
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: You can sue me for my 20 thousand dollars worth of school debt if you really want to.
Summary: He didn’t understand this change in them. Couldn’t put his finger on what it meant; where it had come from. Until last night.

Denial, Comfort Me

Something had changed in his boys. Something substantial and elusive; shared between them. Something John didn’t understand.

Oh, he saw the symptoms of this change alright; was shocked when he first saw them.

Somewhere between the time he had left his eldest son and now Dean had grown a back bone. In all Dean’s life he had never talked back to John. Not when he was seven and John told him they couldn’t buy the batman toy he wanted so much. Not when he was 15 and he had moved them away from his first girlfriend. Not even when John had said those words, those hateful, terrible words, that had driven Sam away from them for four long years. Don’t come back.

Even then Dean had stayed silent, his good little soldier. Hadn’t protested even though John could see the pain in his son’s eyes.

But now he was standing up to John. Fighting for Sam and for himself. And John didn’t like it, not one bit. Except… he could see the strength in Dean’s eyes when his son finally took what he wanted for the first time in his life; the bravery it took to stand up to the one man who had ever been able to control him. John wasn’t so sure that he didn’t like that.

And Sam… his little Sammy, who John still saw as a puppy-eyed 5 year old, staring up at him from behind a book that was far too mature for a child his age. There was a loyalty in him that had never been there before.

The loyalty that John had always received from Dean without a thought he had had to pull from Sam like poison from a wound. He had drilled into his youngest child the importance of family and loyalty since he was too small to remember, but still Sam had left.

And now he stood beside his brother like John had always wished he would. United with him; protective of him. Backing Dean up and daring anyone to try to hurt him. Together his boys were stronger than any force John had ever seen; more deadly than anything he had ever fought in his long life of hunting. He knew that together they would be safe.

But he didn’t understand this change in them. Couldn’t put his finger on what it meant; where it had come from. Until last night.

He had gone for a drive after his boys were sleeping, to clear his head. It wasn’t the first time he had done it. When they were younger he would leave for hours sometimes after a hunt, needing to be alone, needing to clear his head and get ready for the next one.

He could still remember them, his sweet boys. Remembered coming back to the apartment or motel to see them sleeping soundly, untouched by the nightmares that came from the world around them. Sometimes he would find Sam curled up in Dean’s bed. Nine years old with one hand wrapped around Dean’s shirt, the other clutched tightly around the teddy bear he kept hidden in his duffle-bag until the lights went out.

But last night he hadn’t wanted to risk being gone too long. His boys were older now, far more capable of taking care of themselves than they had been so long ago, but times were changing. The world around them was growing darker and he didn’t want to leave them alone.

He had expected to come back to find them sleeping, like before. To see them quiet and innocent in a way only sleep could bring. Instead… he had seen too much.

He would never forget the looks on their faces. The sick, fear-filled surprise in Dean’s wide eyes. The anguish that made Sam turn away, eyes closing as his hands gripped his brother’s shoulders just a little tighter.

John had run then. Got back in his truck and drove for hours with Dean’s frightened eyes clouding his vision. But he had returned, unable to leave, even with this… this thing filling his mind. Because his boys were still in danger. They still needed to finish this.

When he finally opened the door he expected to see the same guilt and fear he had seen the night before. Expected them to be on opposite sides of the room, Sam quiet and brooding; Dean waiting, his good little soldier.

What he found was the same unified front that he had come up against already.

Sam sat in one of the dirty kitchen chairs, hand curled tightly around Dean’s while his eldest leaned against the table, eyes strong and defiant when John walked in. He didn’t let go of Sam’s hand.

“Dean, I want to talk to you outside,” John said tightly, not looking either of his boys in the eye.

“Anything you want to say to me-”

“Outside, Dean. Now.” And for some reason, he didn’t--couldn’t--understand, John hated that Dean did what he said. Hated the way the bravery slipped away and he was the old Dean again; all blind obedience, no questions asked.

Dean pushed away from the table, hand releasing Sam’s, but Sam didn’t let go. He was standing with his brother, that defiant set to his chin, ready to fight for Dean because Dean wouldn’t. “Dad, you can’t do this. You can’t blame-”

John gave him a look that hadn’t worked on Sam since he was twelve, but he still tried. “Sit down, Sam.” And all that anger that Sam saved just for John came boiling to the surface and John started to wonder if he could actually take Sam on and win. He wasn’t so sure anymore.

But Dean came to the rescue, like always, like he had done a thousand times before Sam left for school. He stepped between them, back turned to John, his free hand moving to Sam’s chest to hold him back.

John couldn’t see their faces or hear their words; wasn‘t even sure they were speaking. But Sam’s fingers tightened around Dean’s palm once more before slipping away, then he sat back down and stared resolutely at the floor while Dean turned back to John.

His son followed faithfully, closing the door behind him and waiting patiently next to the truck while John got his bearings. He felt old all of a sudden. Too many years behind him, too much done and seen to have to be dealing with this. With his boys and what they had done.

John sighed and turned to Dean, not ready--he’d never be ready--but needing to say what he had come to say. He knew what Sam had been going to accuse John of in the room, all anger and fierce protectiveness. ‘You can’t blame Dean for this.’

That wasn’t the problem though. It was the logical choice, sure. Dean was older, he was supposed to be taking care of Sam. He must have been the one to lead his little brother down this path.

But John knew his boys. Maybe not as well as he had thought, but he knew them, knew who they were deep down inside. And he knew, he knew, that Dean would ever hurt his little brother. Especially not for his own desires. Not for anything.

He knew that Dean didn’t start… this. Whatever it was. He would never risk the possibility of this thing hurting Sam.

But John also knew that Dean would never say no to Sammy. All their lives Dean had given Sam everything his heart desired, screw the consequences to himself. If Sam was happy, Dean was happy.

So no, John didn’t blame Dean for this. But he wasn’t so sure about Sam.

“Dean…”

Wide green eyes came up to meet his and John’s heart broke. Those eyes Mary’s eyes held so much strength. A strength John had never really seen before, though he was starting to wonder if it hadn’t always been there.

“Tell me you want this,” John demanded, just enough force behind his words to let Dean know it wasn’t a request.

“Dad…” Dean turned away, his face a war of emotions.

But John had to know. He needed to know this, even if he didn’t really ever want to think about it. Hands on his son’s shoulders, he pulled Dean back, made him look at him. “Dean, I’m serious,” he said, gripping tightly. “Look me in the eye and tell me you want this. That it’s not for Sam. That he…”

Horror washed over Dean’s face and he pulled away from his father, breath hissing between clenched teeth. “Are you kidding me?” Anger was rose quickly to the surface, pushing aside the sick dread that had been there a moment before, as Dean did what he did best. Protect Sam. “Do you seriously believe that? Do you seriously think he would do that? That he could do that to me?”

John sighed and turned away, one hand passing over his tired eyes. He didn’t know what he believed anymore. “I don’t know, Dean. Maybe. I… All I know is that you would do anything for Sammy. Even… even this. Even if you didn’t want it.”

A strong hand on his elbow pulled him back around, gripping tight enough to hurt. He looked at his son, at the mixture of anger and love in his eyes; love for his brother so strong that he would protect him from anything. Even their father.

“I want this,” Dean said resolutely, no room for argument. He looked John in the eyes, strong and unashamed. “Sam would never do something like that. He would never use me like that. We both want this, Dad. I want this.”

John sighed again and nodded, something inside him shifting to… not acceptance, never that, but a peace about this that hadn’t been there before. “Okay.”

Dean let go of his arm as he pulled away, but the look on his face was clearly confused, still a little angry. “Okay? That’s all you have to say about this? Okay?”

John wanted to drop it, he really did. He never wanted to think about this again. He was perfectly fine with living in denial. But there was more they had to discuss before this was over.

He turned back to Dean, holding up a hand when Dean started to speak. “I won’t accept this, Dean. Not ever. And I sure as hell won’t condone it. This… this thing, it’s wrong. It’s so wrong, Dean. If it were up to me I would send one of you to either end of the country and pray you never saw each other again.” Dean opened his mouth to speak again but John just barreled on, not really wanting to hear what he had to say.

“But I know that will never happen. So this is what we’re going to do. When I’m here, this…” He pointed at Dean then back to the door of the hotel room where Sam waited. “Doesn’t exist. I don’t want to see it; I sure as hell don’t want to hear anything. You talk to him like your brother, you touch him like your brother. Nothing more. And when I’m here you get a room with two beds, and both of them better have been slept in when I come in. Are we clear on all of this?”

Dean’s face was still a mask of confusion. “Dad?”

John sighed and leaned back against the truck, suddenly exhausted. “Dean, I know I can’t change this. And whether I want to admit it or not, the two of you are stronger together. In whatever capacity that may be. So I’m doing the only thing I can. I’m ignoring it. Okay?”

Dean nodded, eyes and hands twitching nervously, as if he expected something horrible to happen any moment. John just nodded toward the hotel door and Dean walked away after a moment’s hesitation. He didn’t look back.

John watched as Sam met him at the door, eyes wide; frightened and worried. Dean smiled shakily and clapped a brotherly hand on his shoulder, turning him around and closing the door behind them.

And as much as he tried not to, John could still see it. That underlying something that had been in Sam’s look, in Dean’s touch. He would always see it now. In every word they spoke to each other, in every insignificant look and innocent brush of hands.

He knew he just had to look the other way and remember that, together, nothing would stand a chance against them.

END

- Meagan

Two Fics... Sort Of - Sam/Dean

2007-01-20T10:06:22Z

Author’s Note: So, I wanted to write drunk!Sammy (and I swear, this story was started before ‘Playthings’, honest!) and I had never done one of the ‘five things’ stories, so I gave it a try. And I wanted it to be a little angsty, but generally sweet and fluffy. But then my muses started angsting on me big time, so I ended up with two endings. One is happy, the other is very sad.

But then I couldn’t decided which I liked best, so I kept them both and will leave it up to you to choose. If you are in the mood for fluff read the first one. If you are in the mood for angst (lots of it) read the second.

The only difference between the two is the final part. The other four parts are identical.

Title: Four Times Sam Got Drunk… And One Time He Didn’t - Happy Ending
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Schmoop. Is that a warning?
Disclaimer: I keep begging and begging, but Kripke refuses to give them to me. I think he’s afraid of what I’ll do to them if he did.
Summary: Well, there are four times when Sam got drunk. And one time when he didn’t.

Four Times Sam Got Drunk… And One Time He Didn’t - Happy Ending

Fifteen and it was his first drink. Two big mouthfuls from Dad’s worn metal flask, then Dean was sliding into the bed behind him, arms wrapping around his torso to keep him still while Dad sterilized the needle and thread.

The alcohol shot through his system and made everything go fuzzy and numb. It was a strange sensation. He couldn’t feel the wound anymore, long and deep and gushing blood, or the prick-slide of the needle as it slipped in and out of his skin. He imagined he could see his own intestines and started to laugh. Dad looked up at him with sorrowful eyes as he carefully closed the wound and Dean whispered ‘I’m sorry’ in his ear.

It’s not your fault, Sam wanted to say. But he just giggled instead.

***

Eighteen and he had just lost his family. On his way to California with a quick stop at the first bar he had come to. His fake I.D. and sorrowful eyes had earned him enough alcohol to blur everything but his father’s voice in his head.

‘Don’t come back,’ he heard. Over and over again and loud enough to drown out the sound of the cars that whizzed by as he stumbled down the road, duffle bag over one shoulder and no intention of ever coming back. Then the familiar purr of a ’67 Chevy cut through the words in his head and he lurched to a stop at the side of the car when Dean pulled up next to him.

“Not coming back,” he said, glaring at the man standing on the other side of the shining black roof.

Dean nodded and looked off down the road, as if waiting for a different answer that would never come. “Dad’s gone for the night,” he said as if that explained everything. “Come back and sleep it off and I’ll drive you to the bus station in the morning.”

Half an hour later Sam looked at his brother from his bed at the hotel and saw the same broken look in Dean’s eyes that had been there all through the fight. Why are you leaving me? it asked.

“Not you,” Sam slurred into the pillow as Dean pulled the blanket up over his shoulders. “Never you.”

Dean had just kissed his forehead and turned away.

***

Twenty and his heart was broken. Two weeks away from starting his Junior year and his brother had come to visit him, just for the night. It was all Dean ever gave him and all Sam ever asked for, but they always made the most of it.

Sam had taken him to his favorite bar and Dean hit on all the waitresses--even the old woman that looked like his second grade teacher--just to make Sam laugh. His eyes were bright and alive and it made Sam ache inside to remember when he saw that every day.

He had only had two beers and three shots but he was wasted. “You can’t hold your liquor, Sammy,” Dean had laughed, downing his 5th shot and none the worse for wear.

Sam just laughed at his brother, leaning too close and grinning like an idiot. “I miss you, Dean,” he said, all smile and giggling laugh. “I’m glad you came.”

And then he had kissed him. Soft and wet and for just a moment, one sweet moment, Dean had kissed back. Then he was pulling away and downing the rest of his beer before declaring that it was time to take Sam home.

He had left Sam then--tucked into bed but no kiss to his forehead this time--and all alone with too many thoughts in his head and a burning sensation behind his eyes. It would be two years before he saw his brother again.

***

Twenty-two and his life had gone up in flames. The woman he loved was dead and all he wanted to do was follow her. But he hid his pain behind his weapons and the road that stretched out in front of them every day, searching for the next thing to kill while inside he was dying.

Dean came back from wherever he had gone, smelling like cheap perfume and stale smoke, and silently pulled the bottle from his brother’s hands. Long fingers ran through Sam’s hair and he wasn’t sure what he wanted to come next.

“Dean…” Was all he got out before his brother was pushing him down onto the bed and pulling the blanket up over his body. And suddenly Sam was terrified that Dean would leave like he had last time. The he was going to loose the last thing he had left.

Hands scrambled for Dean’s arms as his brother turned away, and Sam’s fingers gripped so tight there would be bruises there for days. One hand pulled Dean down onto the bed and the other wrapped around his neck, desperate for contact, to know that Dean was alive and here.

And then there was Dean’s forehead against his and warm breath across his face; the smell of smoke and old beer as soft words whispered into his ear. ‘It’s okay’ and ‘I’m not leaving’ and ‘go to sleep, I’m here’.

So Sam leaned back, tugging Dean down with him, and Dean slid tight against his back and pulled him close. He fell asleep with Dean’s mouth breathing soft words against his neck.

***

Twenty-five and they had to start all over again. The battle was over and the demon dead, along with a lot of good hunters. It was three months before they were out of the hospital; Dean walked with a limp now and Sam would never see out of his left eye again. Not good enough for hunting so they had to quit.

And now they were in Amsterdam, at the first hotel they had come to after the airport, with no plan and the world stretching out in front of them. “To a new beginning,” Dean said with fear in his eyes and a smile on his lips. Sam could see for the first time the lines around his brother’s mouth and for a moment thought how old he looked.

“Yeah,” he said, smiling back and sipping at his beer while Dean drained half of his. He wanted to get drunk, he really did. Loose himself in the alcohol and forget about beginnings and endings and everything in between. He knew how hard both could be, had done them both too many times, and he was scared too. But he wouldn’t tell Dean that. This time he would stay sober and watch over Dean, like his brother had always done for him.

“What are we gonna do, Sammy?” Dean asked an hour later, and three beers in him now. But he wasn’t anywhere near drunk; he wasn’t a lightweight like Sam. They were lying on Dean’s bed, facing each other, and everything felt the same but nothing was.

Sam shrugged and brushed the back of Dean’s hand with his fingertips. “Dunno,” he said. And then he was leaning forward, lips meeting Dean’s and Dean didn’t pull away this time.

When the kiss broke neither of them moved, forehead's resting against each other and everything was blurry, Sam’s good eye working too hard to focus his brother’s face. Gentle fingers came up to brush the corner of his mouth and Sam could feel Dean’s smile even if he couldn’t see it.

“Yeah,” Dean said, and kissed him again.

END

Title:Four Times Sam Got Drunk… And One Time He Didn’t - Sad Ending
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Major Character Death
Disclaimer: I keep begging and begging, but Kripke refuses to give them to me. I think he’s afraid of what I’ll do to them if he did.
Summary: Well, there are four times Dean was there when Sam got drunk. And one time when he wasn’t.

Four Times Sam Got Drunk… And One Time He Didn’t - Sad Ending

Fifteen and it was his first drink. Two big mouthfuls from Dad’s worn metal flask, then Dean was sliding into the bed behind him, arms wrapping around his torso to keep him still while Dad sterilized the needle and thread.

The alcohol shot through his system and made everything go fuzzy and numb. It was a strange sensation. He couldn’t feel the wound anymore, long and deep and gushing blood, or the prick-slide of the needle as it slipped in and out of his skin. He imagined he could see his own intestines and started to laugh. Dad looked up at him with sorrowful eyes as he carefully closed the wound and Dean whispered ‘I’m sorry’ in his ear.

It’s not your fault, Sam wanted to say. But he just giggled instead.

***

Eighteen and he had just lost his family. On his way to California with a quick stop at the first bar he had come to. His fake I.D. and sorrowful eyes had earned him enough alcohol to blur everything but his father’s voice in his head.

‘Don’t come back,’ he heard. Over and over again and loud enough to drown out the sound of the cars that whizzed by as he stumbled down the road, duffle bag over one shoulder and no intention of ever coming back. Then the familiar purr of a ’67 Chevy cut through the words in his head and he lurched to a stop at the side of the car when Dean pulled up next to him.

“Not coming back,” he said, glaring at the man standing on the other side of the shining black roof.

Dean nodded and looked off down the road, as if waiting for a different answer that would never come. “Dad’s gone for the night,” he said as if that explained everything. “Come back and sleep it off and I’ll drive you to the bus station in the morning.”

Half an hour later Sam looked at his brother from his bed at the hotel and saw the same broken look in Dean’s eyes that had been there all through the fight. Why are you leaving me? it asked.

“Not you,” Sam slurred into the pillow as Dean pulled the blanket up over his shoulders. “Never you.”

Dean had just kissed his forehead and turned away.

***

Twenty and his heart was broken. Two weeks away from starting his Junior year and his brother had come to visit him, just for the night. It was all Dean ever gave him and all Sam ever asked for, but they always made the most of it.

Sam had taken him to his favorite bar and Dean hit on all the waitresses--even the old woman that looked like his second grade teacher--just to make Sam laugh. His eyes were bright and alive and it made Sam ache inside to remember when he saw that every day.

He had only had two beers and three shots but he was wasted. “You can’t hold your liquor, Sammy,” Dean had laughed, downing his 5th shot and none the worse for wear.

Sam just laughed at his brother, leaning too close and grinning like an idiot. “I miss you, Dean,” he said, all smile and giggling laugh. “I’m glad you came.”

And then he had kissed him. Soft and wet and for just a moment, one sweet moment, Dean had kissed back. Then he was pulling away and downing the rest of his beer before declaring that it was time to take Sam home.

He had left Sam then--tucked into bed but no kiss to his forehead this time-- all alone with too many thoughts in his head and a burning sensation behind his eyes. It would be two years before he saw his brother again.

***

Twenty-two and his life had gone up in flames. The woman he loved was dead and all he wanted to do was follow her. But he hid his pain behind his weapons and the road that stretched out in front of them every day, searching for the next thing to kill while inside he was dying.

Dean came back from wherever he had gone, smelling like cheap perfume and stale smoke, and silently pulled the bottle from his brother’s hands. Long fingers ran through Sam’s hair and he wasn’t sure what he wanted to come next.

“Dean…” Was all he got out before his brother was pushing him down onto the bed and pulling the blanket up over his body. And suddenly Sam was terrified that Dean would leave like he had last time. The he was going to loose the last thing he had left.

Hands scrambled for Dean’s arms as his brother turned away, and Sam’s fingers gripped so tight there would be bruises there for days. One hand pulled Dean down onto the bed and the other wrapped around his neck, desperate for contact, to know that Dean was alive and here.

And then there was Dean’s forehead against his and warm breath across his face; the smell of smoke and old beer as soft words whispered into his ear. ‘It’s okay’ and ‘I’m not leaving’ and ‘go to sleep, I’m here’.

So Sam leaned back, tugging Dean down with him, and Dean slid tight against his back and pulled him close. He fell asleep with Dean’s mouth breathing soft words against his neck.

***

Twenty-five and there was nothing left in the world that was good. They had saved the world again, played hero one last time and stopped the war before it could destroy everything. The battle was over before it began and the Demon was dead, but too many good hunters with it.

Sam was in Arizona now, two miles away from the Grand Canyon but he couldn’t go any farther. He couldn’t see it, couldn’t go those last two miles, because Dean never had and it just wasn’t fair. The bartended brought him over another drink and gave him a contemplative look, but Sam’s sorrowful eyes begged him to leave so he did.

He had honestly thought, all the way to the end, that this thing inside him, this thing he was supposed to be, would kill him. That he would die and leave Dean all alone. But now he was here and Dean’s ashes were in the car, waiting to be spread across the Grand Canyon.

A couple hours and few more drinks in him and he should be drunk now, wasted really, because yeah, he can’t hold his liquor. But there is no numbness that the alcohol was supposed to bring. No disconnection from the world; from his memories. He could still feel every last painful moment that he had spent on the ground, cradling Dean’s broken body as the rain had come down and the hunters that were left cheered in celebration.

The bartender set a cup of coffee down in front of him and when Sam looked up at him he realized he was crying. “Who did you lose?” The old man asked, hands busy drying off clean glasses. At Sam’s confused look he smiled sadly and set the shot glass down next to its mates. “You keep looking around you like you’re looking for someone who’s not there. I’ve been in this business long enough to know that means you lost someone important.”

Sam nodded and fiddled with the handle on the coffee mug. Who did you lose?

How did he explain that? How did he explain Dean to someone who didn’t know? Dean was everything.

Dean had been his mother when he was a child; his father when theirs wasn’t around. He had been his best friend all his life, and his lover in everything but body--their life together had been more intimate than anything Sam could imagine having with someone else but they had never crossed that final line.

Dean had been his teacher, his protector, his partner in crime and in saving lives. He was his soulmate. Sam felt half alive without him.

Family, guide, lover, and friend. Dean had been everything, and now he was gone. How could Sam make this man understand?

“My brother,” he finally said, tears dry on his face and nothing left in the world to lose. “He was my brother.”

END

Right Here

- Meagan

What Once Was Lost - Sam/Dean - 6/6

2007-01-14T21:59:45Z

Title: What Once Was Lost - 6/6
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: mentions of child torture/murder (no graphic details)
Disclaimer: I just play with them. I don't get to keep them.
Summary: 13 years ago Sam was left behind while his father and brother went on a hunt. Now, the sadistic cultists that Dean thought his father had destroyed are killing children again and Sam finds out that the long ago hunt didn’t go as smoothly as he had been told.
Author's Notes: Yay! The end! Thank you to everyone who has read, and especially the ones who reviewed. I hope you all loved this story as much as I do. And like I said when I posted the first part, I love this little 'verse and want to keep it for a while. I want to further explore Ryan's relationship with the boys, and their lives together as a family. So be looking for me in the future with new installments. They will probably be few and far between, but they will be there. (You could always friend my fic journal, if you want to garantee that you'll see them. *hinthint*) Enjoy this last part!

What Once Was Lost

“Eat, Ryan,” Dean said, his voice just this side of a command. He knew, he knew, that Ryan didn’t want to eat. That he didn’t want to breathe. That all he wanted was to curl up in a dark hole and never come out again.

But Dean also knew that Ryan was a strong kid. That someday he would be able to move on and live a normal life, with what had happened not 48 hours ago just a memory and pale lines on his skin.

Dean just had to keep him functioning until then. Like his dad had done for him.

Ryan pushed the macaroni noodles around on his plate a little more before taking what couldn’t even be considered a ‘bite’. Dean sighed and stood up, walking over to the bed and sitting down next to Ryan.

It made something inside him clench when Ryan didn’t flinch or pull away. Dean had seen him react to Sam’s touch, tense and ready to flee. And Dean had demanded that no more male nurses or doctors be sent in to check on Ryan after the boy had nearly gone into a panic attack that morning during a routine vitals check. But with Dean he felt safe.

“I know this is hard, Ryan…” Dean said softly, one hand reaching out to pat the boy’s knee.

Ryan’s fork landed on the plate with a clatter and he pushed the rolling table away so hard it crashed into the wall next to the bed. “You don’t know shit,” Ryan hissed, his face turning red; morphing into an ugly, pinched look that said he was trying really hard not to cry. “You sound like my stupid counselor at school. She has the perfect freaking family and she tells me ‘she knows’. She doesn’t know anything, and neither do you! You don’t know-”

Dean grabbed the thin, flailing wrists that were threatening to seriously damage something, and held on tightly. “I do know,” he said softly, patiently. “I know, Ryan.”

Ryan struggled for just a moment, then went limp, staring up at Dean from beneath wet eyelashes. “How?” he demanded, his voice breaking but defiant.

Dean smiled; a sad kind of smile. Ryan reminded him a lot of himself. Proud; rebellious; bold. “Because,” he said, looking Ryan in the eyes, letting him see the truth. “They hurt me too. A long time ago, when I was your age.”

Ryan’s eyes went wide and his mouth dropped open. “But you… I mean, Sam said… Is that why you’re hunters? Because of them?”

Dean shook his head and ran a nervous hand through his hair. This wasn’t how he had intended on filling Ryan in on their lives. But now was as good a time as any, he supposed. “No. We were raised as hunters. Our mom was killed when we were just kids, and our dad… our dad raised us to fight the kinds of things that killed her.”

Dean lifted the hem of his shirt, fingers brushing over the pale, white scar on his abdomen. “You can’t really see them anymore. Not unless you know they’re there. See, me and my dad were… we were trying to catch them, but we couldn’t, so… I was a decoy, and my dad was supposed to follow us.

But we didn’t know that they used a spell that would make him fall asleep, so he couldn’t follow me. I was there for… hours, before he rescued me.”

Neither of them said anything for a long time. Dean’s fingers passed back and forth over the scar in his stomach, tracing the lines of the ritual symbol, his mind far away. Finally Ryan’s small, frightened voice drew his attention back.

“Does it… get better?”

Dean sighed, pushing away the gripping sense of fear that always took over when memories of that day returned. Honest, sad eyes turned to the frightened boy. “You’ll never forget,” Dean said, his voice hollow and tired. “No matter how hard you try or how badly you wish you could. You’ll never forget. But one day… you’ll wake up and realize that you haven’t thought about them in days. And then it’ll be weeks. And sometimes it’ll be like nothing happened, and sometimes someone will say something or do something, touch you the wrong way, and everything will come back and it’ll hurt just like it does today.”

Dean stopped talking and took a deep breath, fingers picking at a spot on his jeans that wasn’t really there. “But you always go on, right?” He looked over at Ryan, the ghost of a smile pulling up the corners of his mouth. “Because you’re stronger than them. Because you’re here and they’re not, and that’s what matters.”

Dean reached over and ruffled Ryan’s hair, trying to change the look in his eyes, trying to make him smile. Ryan sniffed back tears, brushing away the damp lines on his face and batting at Dean’s hand. He breathed in a deep, shaky breath and gave Dean a small smile that gave the older man a glimpse of the Ryan before.

“Sleep or eat,” Dean said, playfully shaking a finger at the boy. “Your choice.” Ryan looked over at the discarded macaroni and scowled, then carefully scooted down in the bed until he was far enough down for Dean to pull the blankets up over his shoulders.

“Will you be here when I wake up?” Ryan asked, his eyes already dropping with sleep. His body was still exhausted from the blood loss.

“Yeah, pal,” Dean said, smiling down at the boy and brushing the dark hair from his eyes. “I’ll be here.”

Ryan drifted off to sleep, Dean staying close by for when the nightmares came. His mind hadn’t shut down since early that morning, before the sun had risen and he had promised his life away from the boy on that bed.

Sam had been very specific in his demands. No hunting, none at all, until after Ryan graduated. They would get a home, not a hotel room. They would get real jobs and enroll Ryan in sports and go to every one of his parent/teacher meetings. They would be a family.

And Dean didn’t know if he could do it. How do you just give up your whole life, change everything you know and are and had always been, in the time it took to drive across the country?

But he had to. He knew he had to learn how to live a normal life, no matter what it took. He had known since the moment he had untied Ryan from the too-familiar altar that he could never leave him.

He hadn’t told Ryan what they planned yet. They had agreed, early that morning before Sam had disappeared to go ‘take care of things’, that they wouldn’t tell the boy until they were sure it would work. Another one of Sam’s demands was that they get custody of Ryan legally. How Sam was planning on accomplishing that Dean wasn’t quite sure, but he also knew that if anyone could do it, it would be his brother.

Ryan stirred in his sleep, a distressed crease forming between his eyebrows, nightmares plaguing him already. Dean reached over to him and rubbed his back until he calmed down. He would do whatever it took.

***

“Where the hell have you been for the past two days?” Dean demanded when Sam trudged wearily through the door. “We haven’t seen you. You didn’t call. Where were you?”

Dean had known that Sam had a lot to do, and for the first day he hadn’t worried that Sam had gone MIA; not a word on his progress, nothing to know that he was even alive, and in their line of work that wasn’t always a sure thing.

But when he had woken up the next morning and Sam still hadn’t come back from wherever it was he had gone Dean had started getting worried. A couple dozen unanswered phone calls and another night spent staving off nightmares--Ryan’s and his own--Dean was nearly frantic. And now Sam was there, casually walking through the door like he hadn’t been missing for two days.

Sam glanced at Dean, then over to Ryan who was staring nervously at the two of them. The youngest Winchester dropped a pile of papers onto the small rolling table in front of Dean and sank wearily into a chair.

“What’s all this?” Dean asked, flipping through the official-looking papers.

“That,” Sam sighed, running a hand over his pale face. “Is everything we need to start a real life.”

He sat up and shuffled through the papers, handing them to Dean one at a time. “Your new birth certificate, California driver’s license, and social security card. Proof of a California GED so you can get a real job, a fake work history, and forged medical records from the last five years, just in case. There’s also a partial personal back story that I want you to memorize before we get to California.

I also have Ryan’s social security card and id, medical records, birth certificate, and his school records. I have a school already lined up for him to start after the New Year, and I’ve contacted a man about a job as a teacher’s assistant at the high school for me.

This is the bank account I set up in both of our names. This is the number of the man we’re going to be renting an apartment from, along with both of our credit histories; yours sucks, but mine is excellent. I’ve contacted a man about a truck, so that we have two vehicles while we’re there, and found numbers for four local mechanics that are hiring right now; I expect you to contact them as soon as we get there.

And last but not least, I had to call in every one of the favors I still had in California, and I’m pretty sure I’ve completely isolated at least three people that I would have liked to get in touch with once we settled in, but I have, legally I might add, the piece of paper that makes me Ryan’s legal guardian so that we can actually leave the state with him.”

Sam flopped back into the chair and let out a heavy sigh.

Dean shuffled through a few of the papers and looked at his little brother with a new kind of respect. “Oh,” was all he could find to say.

“I get to go with you?” Ryan asked, his eyes wide and eager, a smile wanting to break out on his face.

Sam managed to smile back, despite the fact that he hadn’t slept in nearly 48 hours. “Yeah, Ryan, you’re coming with us. We’re going to live in California, just outside San Francisco, until you graduate. And after that… well, we’ll figure that out when we get there.” A smile washed over Ryan’s face so big it looked like it would break, and he scampered from the bed to throw himself at Sam.

Sam huffed out a painful breath when Ryan landed on him, but his smile brightened and he wrapped his arms around the boy, holding him tightly and smiling at Dean over his head.

***

Several hours later Ryan was asleep, but Sam still wasn’t. Too many questions were running through his head. Like ‘how’ and ‘what if’ and a thousand other things.

He knew how to be normal; even if college and having a kid were two totally separate things. He knew how to keep a full time job. How to make friends. How to exist in the real world. He knew how to hear about a strange death on the other side of the country and not get into the car and go investigate. But Dean didn’t.

Dean didn’t know how to wake up in the morning and not immediately check his surroundings for danger. Didn’t know how to walk down the street without looking over his shoulder for watching eyes. Didn’t know how to relax and just live life instead of running off to fight the bad guy of the week.

What Sam didn’t know was how to take care of a teenager. Little kids he could handle. He had nannied for a young couple who were in medical school on daddy’s dollar--something Dean would never ever find out about--for almost 6 months when he first got to California.

But the kid had been two. Ate peanut butter and jelly three meals a day, took 2 hour naps every afternoon, and would quietly occupy himself with Sesame Street whenever Sam needed to study.

A thirteen year old… that was a whole other story. He didn’t know how to deal with a thirteen year old. With school fights, and girl issues, and the emotional rollercoaster that was a teenage boy in puberty. But Dean did.

Dean had practically raised him all his life. From potty training to his first school dance. His first broken heart and his last. Dean had been mother, father, and best friend. And Sam had turned out... well, normal couldn’t apply, but he wasn’t a serial killer so Dean must have done something right.

Sam moved the chair closer to Ryan’s bed. He pulled the flimsy blanket up to his shoulders and checked the IV to make sure it wasn’t twisted.

He looked so young, lying in the big bed, attached to wires and tubes and looking so pale. Sam tried not to picture Dean the same way; young and hurt, waking every hour with nightmares.

“Sam? Why are you awake?” Dean slid into the room, shutting the door quietly behind him. “You should sleep.”

Sam glanced up at his brother and pulled the coffee from his hand. He took a sip and grimaced at the bitter, black taste, handing it back to Dean who laughed quietly. “I can’t sleep in hospitals,” Sam said. “I’ll sleep in the car when we leave. They’re releasing him in the morning.”

Dean pulled up the other chair and sat down next to Sam. Sam turned to him, eyes raw and open. He moved until he was as close to Dean as he could get and laid his head down on Dean’s shoulder.

Dean didn’t protest, didn’t push him away, just wrapped an arm around his drooping shoulders and gently kissed his temple. “We leave tomorrow,” Sam said, fingers curling around Dean’s shirt and holding tightly. “We go back to hiding. To looking over our shoulders. To stealing time.”

Dean’s hand slid into Sam’s hair, petting softly, and he sighed. “Do you regret it already, Sammy?”

Sam looked up; saw Dean’s eyes watching the sleeping boy on the bed. Ryan shifted in his sleep, his face contorting in distress. Dean tensed under Sam’s cheek, ready to jump to the rescue, to fight away the darkness for Ryan like he had always done for Sam.

Sam expected to feel jealous. There was someone else in Dean’s life now that commanded his attention like Sam does. But all he felt was peace. A quiet peace he hadn’t felt in far too long.

Ryan settled back down and Dean relaxed. “No,” Sam said, his eyes closing, Dean’s steady heartbeat soothing him. “Never.”

Epilogue

“Wait, pull over here,” Sam said, pointing to a familiar, blue house on the right side of the street.

An hour ago Sam had signed Ryan out of the hospital, claiming to the sheriff that he was becoming a ward of the state; that they were taking him away from his mother, somewhere safe where he would be taken care of. No one seemed reluctant to let them.

His mother hadn’t been there to see him leave. When Sam had told her that the state was taking him in and that she wouldn’t have to deal with him any more she had readily signed the papers Sam had given her before slamming the door in his face.

Nathaniel had come to say goodbye to Ryan however, and he had thanked Sam and Dean for rescuing him, for taking him away from his mother. And now they were heading west, going to the other side of the country to try and start a new life.

Dean pulled over, shooting Sam a questioning glance, which he studiously ignored as he opened the door and jogged up to the house, throwing a hasty ‘wait here’ over his shoulder as he left.

The door opened to reveal a somber man that reeked of whiskey and cheap soap. “Officer Abrams?” Sam said in his best ‘I’m-your-best-friend-please-listen-to-me’ voice. “Can I talk to you about Ryan Hale?”

***

“See, I told you,” Alicia Meyer said, giving her brother the same impressive eye roll she had the day she was taken by the cultists. “It wasn’t your fault.”

Her brother Steven looked doubtfully at Sam. “You’re sure?” he asked, his eyes pleading for Sam to say yes, to tell him it was all okay.

“I’m sure,” Sam said softly, insistently; willing him to believe. He had said the same thing not 20 minutes ago to the tired, broken Officer Abrams; needing him to believe that he wasn’t at fault, that what had happened to Ryan wasn't because of him. He had left the officer’s house, hopeful that the contemplative look in the older man’s eyes had been a good sign.

“There was nothing you could have done,” Sam reassured Steven once more. “They released the sleeping gas into the whole area; you couldn’t have known it was there, let alone fought it. It’s not your fault.”

Steven nodded slowly, still not entirely convinced. But Alicia just gave Sam her biggest grin and grabbed her brother’s hand, dragging him outside, her soccer ball under one arm. Sam bid goodbye to Mr. and Mrs. Meyer, who looked slightly guilty as Sam shut the door behind himself--he could only imagine what they had said to their son when they found out Alicia had been missing--and walked back out to the car.

“You have such a bleeding heart, Sammy,” Dean grumbled as he threw the car into gear and tore off down the road.

Sam glanced into the back seat where Ryan was soundly asleep, still laced up on pain meds, and smiled softly to himself. “Yeah, Dean, I do.”

***

Across town a junior officer knocked on Sheriff Mitchell’s door. “Sir?” the young woman asked as she walked into his office. “Sir, I found something I think you should see.”

The sheriff put away the papers he had been looking at and took the picture from the woman’s hand. He studied it closely, looking at the small, circled mark in the rib bone of one of the charred skeletons. “What am I supposed to be seeing?”

“Umm…” The woman pointed to the circled mark. “See, this here. I think the investigators from Harrisburg missed. It’s a knife wound. See there, in the ribs, just above where the heart would be.”

The sheriff made a non-committal noise and tried to hand the picture back to the woman. “So?”

“Well, see, the police report said that they all died in the fire, but I think this mark means that, at least this one, didn’t.”

The sheriff looked back down at the picture, eyebrows creasing in thought. He shrugged and handed the picture back. “So one of them didn’t want to burn to death. Probably killed himself before they set off the explosion.”

“Well, see, I thought that too, at first. But then I was going over the evidence log, and there weren’t any knives found that could have made a wound like this. There were just the small ones used in the rituals. Nothing that could have penetrated this deeply.” The woman looked at him eagerly, waiting for his response.

Mitchell took the picture back and stared down at the mark in the blackened ribs. For a while he didn’t say anything, just stared at the photo, a thoughtful expression on his face.

“Sir?”

He handed the picture back and picked up the papers he had been looking at earlier. “The knife probably just got lost in the explosion. Leave it alone.”

“But sir-”

Mitchell sighed and stared up at the woman, tired eyes willing her to understand. “Leave it, deputy,” he said quietly.

The woman looked back down at the picture, then up into her commanding officers face. “Okay.”

END

The whole series can be found here.

- Meagan

Hold Back Your Tears - Sam/Dean

2007-01-12T10:58:49Z

Title: Hold Back Your Tears
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Spoilers for episode 2.10 - 'Hunted'!!!
Disclaimer: Despite my best efforts Kripke still refuses to give them to me.
Summary: Coda piece for 'Hunted'. Drabble.
Author's Notes: This is my very first drabble ever! It's a lot harder to keep it at 100 words than I thought. o.0

Fingers dancing across sweat slick skin, shallow breath in his ear. Lips caress every scar, every freckle, every fucking perfect inch of skin. He can hardly believe it; right under his hands, buried inside him and he can’t believe it.

He can see bursts of flame on the walls, feel it licking his back. He can smell gunpowder. So alone. For just a moment a lifetime he had been so alone.

‘I’m here,’ Sam whispers in his ear, fingers digging into Dean’s shoulders. With eyes too-bright Dean leans down and kisses him, but still doesn’t quite believe.

END

- Meagan

What Once Was Lost - Sam/Dean - 5/6

2007-01-11T11:57:29Z

Title: What Once Was Lost - 5/6
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: mentions of child torture/murder (no graphic details)
Disclaimer: The world is not ready for me to own these boys. *sigh*
Summary: 13 years ago Sam was left behind while his father and brother went on a hunt. Now, the sadistic cultists that Dean thought his father had destroyed are killing children again and Sam finds out that the long ago hunt didn’t go as smoothly as he had been told.
Author's Notes: Thanks and love to my dearest, missing plutogirl10. The last chapter will be up this weekend!

What Once Was Lost

Sam was startled awake late in the night by the sound of the door shutting. He sat up quickly, then settled back down at the sight of his brother. “Dean, haven’t you slept?” he asked, eyeing the coffee in his brother’s hand as he tried to find a comfortable position in the hard chair he had fallen asleep in.

Dean walked over to Sam and placed a hand on the back of his neck, absently massaging the stiff, twisted muscles beneath the skin. His eyes were trained on Ryan who was sleeping fitfully. “I’m fine,” he said, taking a long drink of the bitter coffee he had bought from a machine on the fourth floor.

“No, you’re not, Dean,” Sam said, grabbing Dean’s hand and holding on tightly when Dean tried to pull away. “You haven’t slept in two days. Dean…”

“I did sleep.” Dean pulled away from Sam and moved to the chair on the other side of Ryan’s bed. “I woke up. I’m fine, Sam.”

“No, you’re not.” Sam stood up and walked over to his brother, kneeling down in front of him.

Dean turned tired eyes down to his brother; open and vulnerable in a way he hadn’t been since their father died. “I had a nightmare,” Dean whispered, his voice rough and drained. “First one I’ve had in years. First one I’ve had about them in… a long fucking time. I…”

Just then a frightened whimper came from the bed and Dean’s whole body stiffened, thrown into protective big brother mode by the miserable sounds of a nightmare in progress. He was immediately on his feet and moving to the head of the bed, one hand smoothing through Ryan’s hair, the other gently shaking him awake.

Sam knew that move all too well, but he had never seen this side of it before. He had only seen the gasping, frightened, half-awake side of being pulled from the visions and dreams. Never the soft look in Dean’s eyes as he gently pulled Ryan from his nightmare; the careful hands that made sure to hold on, strong but not tight. It made his heart ache.

Ryan woke with a start, a familiar gasp for breath and hands that reached out for that something solid that promised comfort. Dean sat down on the edge of the bed and gently stroked his sweat-soaked hair. ‘It’s okay,’ Sam could hear his brother whisper in the otherwise quiet room. ‘It’s okay, I’ve got you.’

Slowly Ryan relaxed and rested against Dean’s wounded shoulder, not seeing the wince that Dean couldn’t quite hide. Dean just grit his teeth and held on tighter, waiting patiently for Ryan to fall back into his drugged sleep.

Sam pulled Dean back into the chair once he had settled Ryan back onto the bed and carefully peeled away his shirt to look at the stitches on his shoulder. Red spots were starting to show through the gauze and Sam gave Dean a pointed stare as he reached for the fresh gauze and tape the nurses had started leaving in the room after the third time Sam had stolen it from one of their carts.

He bandaged his brother’s wound in silence, and let Dean pretend he hadn’t mentioned his own nightmares.

***

Dean spent the next day no more than a few feet from Ryan’s bed while Sam watched them quietly and did his best to field questions from the real authorities. The forensics team that had been sent to the burned out building outside of Roxbury had found exactly what they were supposed to. Seven charred skeletons, all the evidence pointing to suicide. They had left quickly and it looked as if no one was really looking too far into it. Seven dead child killers; no one cared why they died.

But every moment that passed with him and Dean still in the town made Sam nervous. Sooner or later someone would run their badge numbers, or recognize Dean’s face from the news casts that were released after Baltimore.

And, while Dean seemed to have forgotten everything but Ryan, Sam was still worried about the cultists. They should have been dead. John Winchester did not make mistakes. He had killed the men that had hurt his son, Sam was sure of it. So why were they back? And Dean had said there would only be five men, yet there had been seven. He said they wouldn’t be armed, but Dean had almost died because they had guns. There were so many questions unanswered.

But Dean didn’t care about any of that.

Sam glanced up from the police reports he had been browsing, smiling at the sound of his big brother’s spirited laugh. Ryan was giggling softly on the bed, his eyes still shadowed with too new memories, but now full of life as he watched Dean.

Dean glanced back at Sam and the soft smile on his face took Sam’s breath away. He hadn’t seen a look like that in his brother’s eyes for far too long.

And soon he would take Dean away from Ryan, taking the smile from both of them.

***

Ryan slept fitfully that night. His doctor had pulled back on the pain medication, keeping him from shutting down completely, and he woke up a half dozen times, gasping and crying. And each time Dean was there to sooth him back to sleep with gentle hands and soft words.

After one bad nightmare Dean fell gracelessly into the chair beside Ryan’s bed, watching him closely as he slipped back into sleep. Dean himself was exhausted. The few short hours of sleep he had got the night before weren’t nearly enough, and now he fought sleep with every breath, his eyes dropping dangerously only to jerk back open again before sleep claimed him.

Sam knew that it was partially so he wouldn’t miss one of Ryan’s nightmares, not that he would; he had never missed one of Sam’s. But he knew that it was mostly to avoid his own.

Knowing his family, Dean had never dealt with what had happened thirteen years ago. Just sucked it up and moved on in true Winchester fashion. The memories had to be reeking havoc on is mind.

There were bags under his eyes and lines around his mouth, marring his perfect skin. It reminded Sam of the first few weeks after their father’s death. When Dean never slept, when he spent what little energy he had on fixing the car; as if when it was done, when they could finally get back in the road, he could drive away from the memories, the pain.

Dean sighed and ran a trembling hand over his face. “I’m gonna get coffee. Want some?” He was about to stand, to try and run from his own memories that stared up at him from the hospital bed.

“Dean.”

Sam’s soft voice drew Dean’s attention and he turned slowly to look at his brother, trying to mask the exhaustion on his face. “Dean, we have to leave,” Sam said, his voice quiet, insistent.

A torrent of emotions flew cross Dean’s face, then his features went carefully blank and he glanced back at Ryan’s bed. “No we don’t,” he said.

Sam stood and grabbed his arm before he could run. “Dean, we’ve been here too long already. Someone’s going to get suspicious.”

Dean pulled his arm away from his brother’s grip, an angry scowl twisting his tired face. “No. No, we’re not gonna leave him. We can-”

“Take him with us.”

Dean stopped in his tracks, anger turning to confusion in an instant, making his head spin. He had spent the last twenty-four hours trying to figure out how to convince Sam to stay in Jerome for a few weeks. Just long enough to help Ryan get back on his feet, maybe convince his mom to sober up.

Now Sam was… he couldn’t mean it. “Sam?”

Sam walked over to where Dean stood, a look of disbelief warring with hope on his pale face. “We’ll take him with us on one condition.” Sam said, his hands wrapping around Dean’s hips, pulling him close, giving him some of his strength.

Dean looked up at him, eyes wide, waiting, wanting. Anything, his eyes say. I’ll do anything.

“We stop hunting,” Sam said, voice low and serious, driving the words home like a knife through Dean’s stomach.

Dean took an involuntary step back, his mouth gaping opening like he had just been slapped. His eyes darted back and forth between Sam and Ryan, mouth working but no sound coming out, hands clenching into fists.

Sam had wondered, ever since the day he told Dean he was leaving for college, if Dean would have gone with him. If he had only asked. But he never had, and he would never know the truth now. But he liked to think that he knew what the answer would be.

“Okay,” Dean said, so quietly Sam almost didn’t hear. “Okay.”

::: NEXT :::

The whole series can be found here.

- Meagan

What Once Was Lost - Sam/Dean - 4/6

2007-01-10T06:07:49Z

Title: What Once Was Lost - 4/6
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: mentions of child torture/murder (no graphic details)
Disclaimer: If I did own them, there would never be breaks, and there would never be hotel rooms with two beds.
Summary: 13 years ago Sam was left behind while his father and brother went on a hunt. Now, the sadistic cultists that Dean thought his father had destroyed are killing children again and Sam finds out that the long ago hunt didn’t go as smoothly as he had been told.
Author's Notes:Thanks and love to my still missing plutogirl10!! Oh, and I used a few names from towns/cities in Pennsilvania and some (very) vague references to police goings-on that are probably totally wrong. I'm not so good with in-depth research. I give no apologies. ;)

What Once Was Lost

Sam kept glancing into the windows of the Impala as he built the make-shift bomb in the back of the car and attached it to the building; as he pulled the two bodies inside; as he cleaned the blood off the van and disturbed the ground where the two men had bled out.

He found all four of their knives in the building and wiped off the handle of the ceremonial knife that Dean had touched. After liberally salting the bodies, and with one last check on the bomb, he shut the door and started the timer, setting it to blow in half an hour.

As he walked back to the car he could see Dean settling Ryan down in the back seat, pushing him gently to lay down, his head resting on Dean’s lap. “How’s your shoulder?” Sam asked as he opened the door closest to his brother.

Ryan glanced up at him briefly, but closed his eyes again when Dean’s hand ran gently across his shoulder. “Not too bad. I think it’s still bleeding though. The bullet didn’t go through.”

Sam helped Dean ease out of his leather jacket and carefully pushed his t-shirt aside to look at his bleeding, bruised shoulder. Dean hissed when Sam touched the outer edges of the wound.

“I’m not gonna try to take the bullet out. We’ll get it looked at when we get to the hospital.” He used the last of the bandages to tape up the wound, his fingers lingering on Dean’s skin, eyes not meeting his brother’s. “You scared the shit out of me,” Sam whispered shakily when he was done.

“I’m sorry, Sam. I just…”

“I know.” Sam gave Dean a wavering smile, his eyes glancing down at Ryan who was already asleep, before leaning forward to place a gentle kiss on his brother’s trembling lips. Then he shut the door and walked around to the driver’s side, checked the girl to make sure she was comfortable once he got in, and silently drove away.

***

Two hours later they were in the hospital, Sam gently holding Dean back as they watched Ryan get wheeled away to the exam room. Behind his own flimsy curtain Dean sat impatiently as a sweet old doctor extracted the bullet and carefully stitched him up, tisking over the scars that canvassed his body and the poor healing done to some. Only the pleading look from Sam kept him from pushing her away and searching the whole hospital until he found Ryan.

“Roxbury officers got there already. The fire’s been put out, and a forensics team from Harrisburg is coming in to check out the scene.” Sheriff Mitchell informed them, tired lines around his eyes stark in the harsh florescent lights.

“You have no idea how thankful we are to you two. We… we found the girl. The one they took two days ago. She…” His eyes filled with tears and he looked away from the brother’s, hands clenching at his sides.

“We’re glad we could help,” Sam said, placing a gentle hand on the man’s shoulder and steering him out of the exam room. “If you need us for everything, we’re going to be here for a while.”

The sheriff nodded and turned to leave, but Dean spoke for the first time since they had left the burning cabin behind. “Where’s his mother?” he asked, jaw tight as the doctor finished the stitches and placed a clean bandage over the wound.

Mitchell sighed and turned back around, face lined with sorrow. “Sent someone out to her, to bring her in. Said she wouldn’t come. Said she didn’t believe him.”

The doctor squeaked a protest when Dean’s body jerked in anger and manhandled him back into place. Sam walked over to him and placed a hand on his shoulder, feeling the tense muscles dancing under his skin. Dean just looked away, closing off to the people around him.

Sam’s hand tightened around his shoulder and he sighed sadly as the sheriff walked away.

***

Dean stared down at the small boy on the hospital bed, remembering 13 years ago when it had been him in that hard, stale bed. Remembering fear and pain. Remembering being so alone. Remembering waking up screaming.

His father had come for him before the end, guns blazing like an action hero, scooping Dean up into his arms and stopping only long enough to salt and burn the bodies. Dean had been in the hospital for three days, recovering from the blood loss; and two weeks more in a hotel, trying to recover from everything else.

He couldn’t image what it would have been like to go through all that without his father by his side. John had been there to hold him when he cried. To soothe him back to sleep when he woke up screaming. To promise him over and over that he was safe, no one could hurt him, I’m here now, you’re not alone.

When Ryan woke up his mother wouldn’t be there. No one would. All he had in his life was an old man at a gas station. Dean ran a gentle hand through Ryan’s hair and blinked back tears of sorrow and memory.

Sam walked up behind him and wrapped his arms around Dean’s waist, resting his chin on Dean’s shoulder. Dean leaned back into him, one hand curling around Sam’s wrist, thumb brushing over his pulse.

“You saved him, Dean,” Sam whispered, squeezing just a little tighter, knowing this was a rare occasion; that Dean would let down his guard, put away the mask, long enough to let Sam comfort him. “He’s alive because of you.” He placed a soft kiss on Dean’s neck and released his hold before Dean could push him away.

Dean let out a sarcastic snort, hands clenching into fists at his sides. “Maybe I shouldn’t have.”

Sam jerked back as if he had been hit. “Dean, how can you say that?” he asked, confused and horrified.

Dean turned dark eyes to his brother, and stared at him as if he could burn him alive. “What did I bring him back to, Sam? Nothing. He has nothing. No one to care about him. No one to love him. He’s been through hell, and his mother is off somewhere drunk, and doesn’t give a damn about him.”

Dean turned back to the boy, his whole body shaking. “How will he ever survive this alone?” he whispered, tears filling his eyes and sliding down his face. He turned around and pushed passed Sam to get to the door. “He’s better off dead,” he hissed as he fled the room.

***

Hours passed and Dean didn’t return. Nurses came and went, checking on Ryan as he slept the deep sleep of the drugged. Sam stayed close by Ryan’s side as much as he could, waiting for him to wake up, not wanting him to be alone.

When they had finally reached the hospital, each carrying a child into the ER, Ryan had cried when they took him away from Dean. Scared and in pain, Dean had been his only stable source. The only person he knew he could trust. But now Dean was gone, lost somewhere in his own sorrow, and Ryan didn’t have anyone.

Sam thought about what Dean had said and wondered it there wasn’t some truth behind it. Sending Ryan back to his mother certainly wasn’t a good idea. After all, Sam believed his mother when she said that Ryan ran off sometimes. But he also believed Nathaniel that Ryan was a good kid that never ran away. He only ran way from his home.

The fact that a thirteen year old kid would be so desperate to get away from his home that he would sleep God knows where nights at a time, but still show up to school every day, and go to the gas station to help Nathaniel, said a hell of a lot about Ryan’s home life. And Ryan too.

He was obviously a strong kid. Sam knew he would survive if they sent him home. But that didn’t mean it was the bet thing for him.

A jostling from the bed drew Sam’s attention and he turned to see Ryan sifting restlessly. He reached over to him and placed a hand gently on his forehead, trying to calm him as he woke up. “Ryan, can you hear me?” he asked softly.

Ryan whimpered and shifted away from Sam’s touch, his eyes opened wide, deep brown depth filled with fear turning to look at Sam. “Dean?” Ryan whimpered, his voice so young and fragile.

Sam’s heart clenched tightly and tears filled his eyes. “Dean’s not here right now, pal,” he said. “He’ll be back soon.”

Sam watched silently as Ryan slowly woke up, his eyes clearing of the drugged haze. “If he’s gone to get my mom she’s not gonna come,” the boy said after a few minutes, his eyes not meeting Sam’s.

“Yeah, we know.”

Ryan turned to look at Sam, his eyes calculating, searching for something. “Who are you?” he asked, his fingers playing restlessly with the thin blanket that covered him.

Sam swallowed hard and glanced nervously around the room as if someone was listening in the shadows. He didn’t want to lie to Ryan. The boy had been through enough, he needed to be able to trust someone. Sam also got the suspicion that Ryan would know he was lying.

He leaned close to the bed and looked into Ryan’s dark eyes. “We’re hunters,” he said. “Me and my brother. We hunt the supernatural. Kill evil things, like the cultists that took you. It’s… kind of our job.”

Ryan looked at Sam, suspicion written on his face. Sam just stared back, determined to make him believe, to let him know he was safe. Finally Ryan nodded and relaxed, eyes slipping closed into sleep.

Just then Dean walked through the door, keys dangling loudly in his hand, and Ryan sprang back up, smiling brightly when he saw Dean. “Dean!” he shouted, nearly launching himself from the bed. But Sam caught him by the shoulders and gently pushed him back.

“You need to rest, Ryan,” he said in explanation to Ryan’s hurt look. The boy nodded and lay back down, body stiff until Sam let go of him, but he didn’t take his eyes off of Dean.

“How ya doin’, kiddo?” Dean asked, sitting down on the bed next to Ryan, ignoring Sam’s questioning look.

Ryan sniffed and looked away from Dean, picking at an invisible spot on the blanket. “Okay,” he said with just the slightest quiver.

Dean waited for a minute, but Ryan wouldn’t look at him. Finally he reached out one hand and lifted Ryan’s face up with two fingers under his trembling chin. Ryan’s eyes met Dean’s and it was only a moment before he was shaking his head, tears filling his dark eyes. He cast a quick look at Sam and turned his face away, trying to hide an embarrassed sniffle.

Sam knew that stare. Knew it all too well. Dean had perfected it far before he was even an adult. Sam remembered being twelve, staring up into Dean’s serious, dark eyes, the heat of his strong hands under Sam’s chin, telling Dean about the bully in his 6th grade class.

Dean had always known when Sam was lying to him, but he had wanted to hear it from Sam. Sam had never been able to look into those eyes and not tell him everything. Not until he left.

He watched the two of them for a few minutes; his big, tough, man’s-man of a brother turned back into a soft, gentle protector in the face of a frightened boy. And he knew, deep down in his heart, that Dean was the only one who truly understood what Ryan had been through. The only one that could really help him.

He just didn’t know what to do about that.

::: NEXT :::

The whole series can be found here.

- Meagan

What Once Was Lost - Sam/Dean - 3/6

2007-01-07T02:58:23Z

Title: What Once Was Lost - 3/6
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: mentions of child torture/murder (no graphic details)
Disclaimer: Dreams don't pay the bills, honey.
Summary: 13 years ago Sam was left behind while his father and brother went on a hunt. Now, the sadistic cultists that Dean thought his father had destroyed are killing children again and Sam finds out that the long ago hunt didn’t go as smoothly as he had been told.
Author's Notes: Shout-out to my darling plutogirl10 who is trapising cross-country in her hippie van, and who is always so wonderful to me and my ego.

What Once Was Lost

For two excruciating hours Dean followed the white van, just far enough away that they weren’t noticed, but never so far that they lost sight of it. What Dean really wanted was to ram the fucking thing and pull out the hearts of the two men inside; demand to know if they had hurt any of those kids while their blood stained his hands. He was never very good at waiting.

“No wonder the police couldn’t find them,” Sam muttered, nearly 100 miles outside the town. “The bodies are in the opposite direction. They’ve been misleading them since the start.”

Dean had just grunted and sped up around a corner to keep sight of the van.

“What are we going to do once we get there?” Sam asked.

Dean shot him a disbelieving look. “What the fuck do you think we’re going to do, Sam? We’re going to kill the sons-of-bitches.”

Sam resisted the urge to start yelling. “I know that, Dean. But we can’t just go in there guns blazing. We’ll have to take Ryan to a hospital, and the police will need an explanation. We can’t just send them to a pile of burnt bodies full of bullet holes. Will these people even be armed?”

“No. Just with the ceremonial knives, but those aren't a threat. Even to cops.” The van in front of them turned off onto a dirt road and Dean followed carefully behind.

“I guess we could just take the kids to the hospital and split. Let the cops try to figure out what happened.” Sam suggested.

Dean shook his head, hands tightening on the wheel. “No. We can’t just leave Ryan there. Not after what he’s been through. You think his mother’s going to be any good for him?”

“Dean…”

“Sam, don’t even start with me.”

“Alright, then we need a plan, and quick.”

“Well then you better think of one.”

Twenty minutes passed, Dean still following the van as carefully as he could down the deserted back roads that were leading them to the middle of nowhere, before Sam spoke again. “Alright. We’ll get the knives out of the back before we go in for Ryan. Slit their throats, but don’t hit the spine. We’ll salt the bodies just in case and burn down the whole building, or wherever it is we’re going, with the bodies in it. It’ll take care of any evidence of murder.

I have extra gunpowder, I can whip up a pipe bomb and we’ll tell the police it was some… self-destruct thing. Suicide or something, when they realized they had been caught. Alright?”

Dean sent Sam a calculating look. “These are people, Sam,” he said carefully. “Real live people. Not demons, not spirits. Humans. Can you do this?”

Sam’s heart beat a little faster and he realized that he was afraid, but not because of what they were going to do. He was terrified of the look in his brother’s eyes. His eyes had gone cold while they drove toward the cultist’s hide-out, all the heat and anger from that morning replaced with a numb, dangerous look.

He thought about Dean, young and terrified, tied to an altar while these sick people used his body in their rituals. “Yeah,” he said, turning away from his brother, unable to look into his eyes. “Yeah, I can do this.”

Dean nodded, his jaw tightening as the van slowed down and turned into a driveway. He parked the car where they were and was immediately out the door and taking four wicked looking knives from the trunk.

He tossed two to Sam and they both headed through the thick over-growth that hid the driveway from view; a lifetime of practice made them nearly silent in the dense woods. Behind the heavy foliage was a small, old building that looked like it was built in the 18th century. Smoke was pouring out of the chimney and the two tiny windows were blacked out.

The two men were opening the back of the van, and Dean tensed when he saw the unconscious girl that was tied up in the back. Before Sam could stop him he erupted through the trees and had his hands around one man’s throat. Great gushes of blood poured over the van and the other man who stood, stunned into silence until Sam came up behind him.

A startled yell erupted from the man before Sam’s knife pierced the artery at his neck, sending his blood flowing to the ground as he fell, a wide-eyed stare left on his lifeless face.

“So much for subtle,” Sam hissed as the door to the cabin burst open and two more men rushed out.

The men came out far more prepared than the first two had been. They had guns trained on both brothers before they could even move, and Sam and Dean stopped in their tracks, hands raised and dripping blood.

Sam was ready to panic, ready to scream at the injustice of it all, when a frightened shriek rang out from the cabin. In an instant the tense scene turned to chaos. Dean lunged for the gunman, armed only with his knife. Sam screamed when both men fired.

There was blood everywhere and before Sam could figure out what had happened two bodies were on the ground, with Dean standing over them, blood gushing from the bullet wound on his shoulder, chest heaving with his furious breath. Dean’s eyes were wild, filled with something that Sam didn’t understand, something terrifying. Then he was running for the door of the cabin, leaving four dead bodies and his brother behind.

Sam followed as quickly as he could, throwing himself at the three men that surrounded his brother the moment he entered the tiny cabin. One man went down immediately, neck carved open nearly to the bone, but another spun away from Dean and lunged at Sam, throwing him against a wall covered in shelves full of glass bottles.

One bottle fell, landing on his head and shattering, sending down a spray of glass and copper-red liquid that covered Sam’s eyes and filled his mouth. He gagged and lunged away from the wall, hands groping blindly for the man that was still attacking him.

His hands wrapped around a flying limb and he pulled, off-balancing the man and sending him crashing somewhere that Sam couldn’t see. He wiped the blood from his eyes and looked for Dean.

His brother’s hands were wrapped around the final man’s throat, knives lost somewhere on the chaotic floor. The man Sam had tossed across the room had risen to his feet and was stumbling back to where he stood, a small knife clutched in one hand.

Sam kicked the knife away and tackled the man to the ground, his own knife sliding down through the man’s neck to end his life. He looked up from the dead man’s blank eyes, chest heaving with anger and adrenaline.

A clatter from across the room drew his attention and he looked up to see Dean rising from the floor, pushing at the dead body that still had the small, ceremonial knife imbedded in his neck. Dean stumbled to his feet and lurked over to the altar.

Ryan whimpered when he saw Dean, covered in blood and vibrating with tension. Dean’s face crumbled and he took a step back. “No, no, no. Ryan, it’s okay. We’re here to help you.”

The boy was crying as he struggled against the bindings that held him to the stone table. He was naked, pale skin shining with sweat in the dim light. Familiar symbols were carved into his skin, red and angry, seeping blood onto the stone where it ran into grooves in the sides and down to the glass bottles on the ground at all four corners.

His dark eyes were wide and filled with tears, pink lines streaking through the blood that had been smeared in ancient symbols across his face. He pulled at the straps, and bit at his bloody bottom lip.

Dean stepped very slowly back to the altar and placed one hand on the leather binding that held Ryan’s right wrist. “Look, Ryan,” he said, his voice low and calm, trying to soothe the frightened boy. “They’re dead. Look. They can’t hurt you anymore.”

Ryan’s breath hitched in his chest and he lifted his head, looking down at the three dead bodies on the floor. His eyes flicked back and forth from Dean to Sam, then he began to cry, great wracking sobs that shook his whole body.

“Dean.” Sam stepped forward slowly and handed Dean his knife.

“Go get that blanket under the front seat,” Dean said quietly as he carefully began to cut away the leather cords around Ryan’s wrists and ankles.

As soon as the cords were cut Ryan sat up and threw himself at Dean; thin, bruised arms wrapping tightly around Dean’s neck. Dean held him close and ran a hand through his sweaty, blood-matted hair, whispering senseless words into Ryan’s ear as he cried.

Sam came back in carrying the blanket and several things they kept in the trunk for emergency medical treatment. He wrapped the blanket around Ryan’s shoulders, ignoring the way he flinched away from his touch, and set the other things down beside him.

“I’m going to get the girl into the car, then make the… you know.”

Dean nodded and gave Sam a shaky smile. “Put her in the front so Ryan can lie down in the back. And get those bodies in from outside.” Dean carefully placed his hands on Ryan’s shoulders and gently pushed him back until he could look at his face.

Tears were still trailing down his cheeks but he had stopped sobbing, his body going too still. “Ryan? Ryan, look at me,” Dean demanded, fearing that the boy may have gone into shock. If the bottles on the floor were any indication, he had lost far too much blood.

The boy lifted his head slowly and turned glassy eyes to Dean. His pupils were dilated, blowing out almost all the dark brown in the irises. The unfocused, flat look told Dean that he was drugged.

“Ryan, buddy, look at me, okay?” Dean asked again. Ryan tried to focus on him, his eyes flitting up to Dean’s. But his confused gaze flicked over Dean’s shoulder and his eyes grew wide. He let out a terrified scream and Dean immediately spun around, one hand reaching for the knife he had place on the altar.

The knife connected with flesh and Dean turned into the thrust, bearing down on the surprised man that had one hand clutched around the knife in his heart, the other around the one in his neck. Dean snarled and kicked the man, the knife making a sickening, wet noise as the man slid off the end and down to the floor.

Dean watched as the body jerked, blood pumping from his neck and chest, then went still. One last ragged breath slipped out. Dean knelt and slit the man’s throat from ear to ear. He spat at the body in disgust then turned back to Ryan, scooping him and the medical supplies up together and carrying him outside.

Sam had driven the car up behind the van. The girl was lying unconscious in the front seat and Sam had his head buried in the trunk. “Dean, what-” Sam started to say, head popping up from behind the car.

“I’ll patch him up in the car. Blow this fucking place and let’s get the hell out of here. And don’t forget about the blood on the van.” Dean nearly overbalanced trying to open the car, but Ryan wouldn’t let go of his neck and Dean wasn’t about to make him. He got the back door opened and carefully slid inside, setting Ryan down on the seat and wrapping the blanket more tightly around his shoulders.

He leaned over the front seat and turned the car on, twisting the heater up to full blast before turning back to Ryan. “I’m gonna patch you up, okay, pal?” he said, wetting a clean hand towel with the canteen Sam had brought with the other supplies.

“You’re bleeding,” Ryan said, one thin arm pushing past the blanket to point to Dean’s shoulder.

Dean looked down at the bullet hole that was soaking blood into his jacket. He hadn’t even known he had been shot. “Oh. I… I’m fine,” he said between clenched teeth. “Let’s take care of you first, alright?” Ryan nodded and then sat silently as Dean cleansed and bandaged his wounds with the ease of years worth of practice.

::: NEXT :::

The whole series can be found here.

- Meagan

What Once Was Lost - Sam/Dean - 2/6

2006-12-31T08:27:34Z

Title: What Once Was Lost - 2/6
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: mentions of child torture/murder (no graphic details)
Disclaimer: Oh, how I wish darlings. But no.
Summary: 13 years ago Sam was left behind while his father and brother went on a hunt. Now, the sadistic cultists that Dean thought his father had destroyed are killing children again and Sam finds out that the long ago hunt didn’t go as smoothly as he had been told.
Author's Notes: A BIG hug and thanks to my bestest Supernatural buddie plutogirl10 without whom this story would never have been. I miss you baby!

What Once Was Lost

“Yeah, Ryan’s a good kid,” the old man behind the counter said, handing back Ryan’s school picture. “When he didn’t come yesterday I just knew something was wrong.”

The man--his nametag read ‘Nathaniel’--shook his head and sighed sadly. “Thinking about him going through what those other kids went through… breaks my heart. I mean, no kid should go through that, but Ryan… he’s something special.”

Sam nodded solemnly and slid Ryan’s picture into his back pocket. “His mother said that he disappears a lot. Is that true?”

Nathaniel looked surprised and shook his head in denial. “Never missed a day coming by here. He stops by on his way home from school; every day for the last year or so. Cuts through the park out back.”

The man looked regretfully over his shoulder, as if he could see the park through the wall. “The first few kids disappeared from there. I warned him but… he gets it in his head that he’s invincible.”

“He always comes here? Never gets distracted or too busy?” Sam pushed.

“Yeah, see, I run this place by myself Monday through Friday. And we get stock shipments in the afternoons. But with my back the way it is, I can’t stock the shelves properly. Ryan would stop by and help me. Never missed a day since he started last year.”

Nathaniel’s eyes glanced down at the boxes behind the counter, tears welling up behind his eyelashes. “Thank you, sir,” Sam said softly, his heart breaking for the man. He seemed to be the only person that cared for Ryan.

Nathaniel looked up at Sam, cold anger in his eyes. “You find that boy,” he said. “You find that boy and you catch any son-of-a-bitch that touches him, you hear me?”

Sam nodded and turned away. “I will,” he promised.

***

Dean paced back and forth in front of the Impala, staring out at the park that Ryan had disappeared from. He could almost see the boy, walking alone through the park, backpack over one shoulder, feet shuffling through the fallen leaves. He could see the men walk up behind him, large hands wrapping around his arms. He could see the backpack fall to the ground, forgotten as Ryan was pulled away, lapsing into unconsciousness.

He could see it because he had been that boy, thirteen years ago.

It had been a simple plan. Dean would walk the empty streets of the town alone, waiting for the cultists to take him--after 8 days of children being taken they had thought he would be the only good target out--then John would follow and kill them all.

But four more kids had disappeared and Dean hadn’t been taken. They knew the pattern; thirteen kids every thirteen years. If Dean didn’t get taken they would loose another child and thirteen more years.

But the cultists had finally taken the bait. Dean had been shooting hoops in an abandoned lot in the center of the town. Two men had come up behind him, grabbing him. He hadn’t even struggled, wasn’t supposed to. Just let the men drag him away into darkness. But he didn’t mind. He knew his dad would come for him.

“Dean.” Sam’s hand landed on Dean’s shoulder, startling him out of his memories.

“What?” Dean snapped, turning away from the empty park.

Sam bit back an angry reply and dropped a pile of case files on the hood beside Dean. “4 of the kids have disappeared from this park. The first two, the fourth, and then Ryan. Two others disappeared from the school area and one boy, the 5th kid, was actually taken from his back yard. They’ve had the park on constant patrol for the past three days.”

Dean picked up the top file, flipping it open to look at the picture clipped to the top of the papers. The boy was the third to disappear. He was found two days ago, body abandoned in the woods about 50 miles from the edge of the town.

“So how did they get to Ryan?”

Sam sighed and fished through the files until he found Ryan’s. He handed it to Dean, flipping to a police report at the back. “Officer on duty said he ‘fell asleep’.”

Dean flipped back to the picture on the front of the file. “That sounds suspicious.”

“Address is in there.” Sam tapped the file with one long finger, his eyes searching Dean’s tired face.

Dean nodded and stood. “Let’s go.”

***

They found Officer Abrams at his home, in almost as bad of shape as Ryan’s mother had been. He was still in uniform--disheveled and dirty--dark bags under his eyes and a glass of amber liquid in one hand. “What do you want?” he asked, voice rough.

Sam glanced at Dean and knew he saw the same thing. There was no way this man was performing any rituals tonight. “Officer Abrams, we wanted to talk to you about Ryan Hale.”

A haunted look filled the man’s eyes and he turned away, leaving the door open for Sam and Dean to follow. “Don’t know what happened,” he said as he sat down in the dark living room.

He stared down at the glass in his hand, tears welling up in his bloodshot eyes, his whole body caved in and small. “17 years as an officer in this town and never seen anything more than a string of cars stolen for joyrides. Then these kids… I wanted to do anything to help. So Stevens put me on the park. See, I couldn’t handle the crime scenes. What happened to those kids… I thought, you know, I couldn’t help the ones that were already taken, so I figured the best thing I could do was make sure that no others went missing. Then…”

The man’s voice broke and his shoulders fell, shaking with silent sobs. Sam and Dean watched in silence as the man tried to control his pain.

“I don’t know what happened,” he said again, angrily wiping at the tears that had fallen from his eyes. “I was there, watching and then… I’ve never fallen sleep on a job in my life. I just don’t know what happened.”

“Thank you, sir,” Sam said as he and Dean turned to leave. But the man didn’t hear him; didn’t see them go. He just kept repeating over and over, I don’t know what happened.

***

“You know, the woman that was tutoring the sixth kid, said the same thing,” Sam said as they walked out to car. “They were studying in the library after school hours and the girl went to go get a book. Tutor fell asleep at the table and didn’t see or hear anything. She said she thought it was because she hadn’t been sleeping lately because of her new baby.

“And the parents of the boy taken from his backyard…” Sam pulled the case files out of the car and flipped through them until he found what he wanted. “Were asleep on the couch when he was taken.”

Dean sat down on the hood of the car, his eyes dark, haunted as he looked down the quiet street. “That explains everything,” he muttered under his breath. “Why didn’t he just tell me?”

“Dean, what are you talking about?” Dean turned to Sam. He looked lost. “Dean?”

Dean shook his head and walked over to the driver’s side. “When they took me, I didn’t remember how… I didn’t remember what they used to knock me out long enough to get me to their hideout. I just remember… being in this empty lot, shooting balls at this old basket ball hoop, then I… I was there. With them.”

“You think they used magic?”

Dean nodded, hands clenching on the hood of the car. “It would make sense. You know, after a couple kids start disappearing people stop letting them out alone. If every single kid has an escort everywhere they go…”

Sam nodded. “They would have to get rid of the escort somehow, without risking exposure by attacking them or killing them to get to the kid.”

“So they use magic to knock out the kid and whoever’s watching them.” Dean’s eyes wouldn’t meet Sam’s, but Sam could see the pain on his brother’s face.

He looked across the top of the car at his brother. Dean was too quiet about this case; too withdrawn. There was something he was hiding. “Dean, what is going on with you?” Sam asked, his voice pleading for answers. “Why won’t you talk to me?”

Dean threw Sam one of his patented smirks. “I don’t ‘talk’, Sam. You don’t know that by now?”

Sam growled, his hands slamming down on the hood of the car. “Damn it, Dean. I don’t care if you want to keep all your emotions locked away where no one can see them, but we can’t do this case if I’m running blind here!”

Sam spun away from Dean, chest heaving with anger. He took a moment to compose himself, then turned back around. “If you expect us to find this kid, and kill these sons-of-bitches, you have to tell me what’s going on. You have to tell me what you’re hiding.”

Dean’s hands ran through his hair restlessly, his eyes going anywhere but to Sam. His resolve seemed to be slipping and for a minute Sam had hope that Dean would actually talk to him; tell him what was going on. But he just turned dark eyes to Sam, jaw set in a hard line, and everything in him shut down again.

“You know everything I know about this case, Sam. I’ve told you everything that will help. So stop worrying about me, and help me figure out a way to find Ryan, alright?”

Sam wanted to push. He wanted to yell and scream and punch something until Dean understood that he didn’t have to suffer alone through whatever was hurting him. But in all his years of trying nothing had ever worked, so he highly doubted it would now.

“Alright, fine.” Sam sat down on the hood of the car, arms crossing in front of his chest. “I have an idea, but you’re not going to like it.”

Dean looked at him warily, anxious now that Sam wasn’t yelling or even looking at him. “What?”

“We wait for the next kid to get taken and follow them like dad did,” Sam says in a rush, half under his breath, afraid of Dean’s reaction.

“No fucking way, Sam!” Dean yelled, pushing himself off the hood of the car. “Are you fucking kidding me? No way!”

“Dean, it’s our only choice,” Sam says slowly. He knew that this proposal would not be met with enthusiasm. He knew that thoughts of Ryan and what he’s going through right now haven’t left Dean’s head all day, because they haven’t left his either. But they really didn’t have a choice.

“There’s something else we can do,” Dean insisted.

“Dean, there’s nothing,” Sam tried to reason, keeping his voice quiet, imploring. “We have no idea where they’re taking these kids. And even if we started looking now, where would we look? The bodies have been dumped in a 50 mile radius of here. It would take days, weeks, to search that much area. We’d never find him in time.”

Dean’s whole body stiffened and he looked like he wanted to hit something. Hard. “We can’t just sit around waiting,” he said, his voice dangerously low. “You don’t know what he’s going through. You have no fucking clue, Sam! So don’t you fucking stand there telling me we have no choice. You don’t know!”

“Dean.” Sam stood and walked over to where his brother stood so rigidly, trying to block out the world. He placed a gentle hand on Dean’s shoulder even though his whole being wanted to wrap his arms around him and pull him away from the world that hurt him so badly.

“You do, don’t you?” Sam asked softly, his hand carefully squeezing Dean’s shoulder. “You know what he’s going through.”

In the last few hours Sam had been wracking his brain trying to think of where he had seen the symbols on the dead children’s bodies before. They seemed so familiar, but he just couldn’t place them.

But it had finally clicked in Sam’s brain. Dean’s agitation and anger about the case; his dark mood and quiet pain. If Dean hadn’t known about the spell that put the adults to sleep, then neither had their father.

Sam remembered the symbols from the pictures online because he had stroked the ghost of one with his tongue. Kissed it and traced it with his fingers in those rare times when Dean would indulge Sam’s fascination with his scars. The thin jagged lines of the ritual symbols still left their pale white mar on Dean’s body thirteen years later.

Sam’s fingers reached out of their own accord and gently brushed Dean’s jeans where one of the scars lay; just at the top of his thigh where leg met hip. Dean jerked and shoved him away, pushing him hard enough that he lost his balance and stumbled. Dean just stalked back to the car and leant against the door as Sam righted himself.

The tell-tale line had formed between Dean’s eyebrows and his dark green eyes were too-bright with painful tears. “He said… he said he would be right there,” Dean said in a harsh whisper. “He was supposed to be right there as soon as we got to their hide-out. But then I woke up and…”

Sam walked over to Dean, stepping resolutely into his personal space. His fingers dipped into the waistband of Dean’s jeans and curled tightly around the fabric, pulling him closer, his knuckles just barely brushing the skin above his boxers.

Dean took a deep breath and kept talking. “When I woke up I was tied to the altar that all the other kids had died on and he wasn’t there. He didn’t find me… for hours. Hours after the ritual had started. That’s why we were gone so long. So I could heal.”

Sam breathed out deeply and rested his forehead against Dean’s temple, his lips almost brushing Dean’s cheek. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

For a moment Dean’s body leaned into Sam as Dean allowed himself to take the comfort offered by his brother. But then he was pulling away again, shutting himself off. “It’s already 9 o’clock. There aren’t any kids around. We can’t just… leave him there.”

“We don’t have a choice, Dean,” Sam said again, wishing it weren’t so. “We know what happened now, so we can avoid it. We won’t fall asleep. We’ll find him. I promise.”

Sam leaned forward and ran a soothing hand up Dean’s back before kissing him softly just below his ear, a ghosting touch that made Dean want to cry. Their rule had always been ‘no promises’. Too much shit went wrong; too many promises would go un-kept. So Dean knew that Sam was serious about this.

Dean’s jaw clenched and his eyelids blinked rapidly, fighting the tears that were trying to break free. Sam knew he wanted to keep fighting, for Ryan, for himself. But he just nodded and walked away.

***

They were putting all their eggs in the same basket, but they had nothing else to go on. The majority of the kids had been taken from the park so they had to hope that the next one would be as well.

There was no officer at the park when Sam and Dean put their plan into action; they were all out searching the area where the bodies had been found. And the Winchester brothers had climbed to the top of the gas station, binoculars in hand.

“What if we fall asleep too?” Dean asked anxiously, eyes sweeping back and forth across the park that was stretched out in front of them.

“We won’t,” Sam assured him. “Yesterday the officer fell asleep but Nathaniel didn’t. The spell must not reach this far.”

Dean shifted restlessly, fingers tapping his knees as he moved the binoculars up to his eyes, then dropped them, then pulled them up again. “What if no one comes to the park? What if they’re not even watching it today?”

“Where would we go, Dean? This isn’t exactly a tiny town. This is all we’ve got.”

Dean sighed and shifted on the hard roof. He had moved beyond anger and into fear. Sam knew that he needed to find this boy; as much for himself as for Ryan. But they were completely out of options and they both knew it. If they had more time they might be able to come up with a better plan, but they didn’t. Every minute that passed was a minute that Ryan spent in a nightmare.

Sam could only pray that they found this boy on time. He knew that this plan was a long shot, but he was terrified of what would happen if midnight came around and they hadn’t found Ryan. And he was ashamed to admit that it had nothing to do with the boy.

He didn’t want Ryan to suffer, he couldn’t bear the thought of what was happening to him right now, but Sam knew that Ryan’s death would ruin Dean. They had to find these bastards and stop them for good before this case destroyed his brother.

Too much time passed in silence, Dean becoming more and more agitated every moment. His whole body was stiff and Sam knew he was close to bolting. He got this way whenever they came to a slow time in hunting. Every muscle in his body screamed for him to do something. And now it was backed by an urgency that showed in every tight movement and stuttered sigh.

After nearly 2 hours a young girl ran into the park, a teenage boy following close behind. Dean immediately trained his binoculars on them while Sam started searching the surrounding area for anyone that looked suspicious.

The girl was young, eleven or twelve years old, with messy blonde hair and a soccer uniform hanging off her skinny frame. She kicked a soccer ball at her brother who kicked it back half-heartedly as his eyes scanned the park.

Dean read their conversation from their lips, a skill he had picked up when he was young and trying to find information for his dad that people weren’t willing to give up.

‘We shouldn’t be here.’ From the boy.

‘I have to practice.’ From the girl, accompanied by a rather impressive eye-roll.

‘Mom’ll kill me for bringing you here.’

‘She won’t know, will she.’

The conversation ran off into subjects of school classes and an upcoming vacation, but no one else entered the park. Sam started chewing on his lower lip, wondering if he had made a fatal mistake in making them stay here. Dean just watched the children intently, his whole body tense enough to shatter.

After a few minutes the boy sat down on a park bench, his eyes trained carefully on his little sister as she kicked the ball across the open grass. A few minutes after that his eyes started to droop with sleep and Dean smacked Sam to get his attention.

“I see it,” Sam hissed, one hand poised on the ledge of the building, ready to make a quick exit.

Slowly, very slowly, the boy drifted off into sleep; the girl’s movements became slower, leaded down with fatigue. Dean gasped when she finally dropped to the ground, the ball rolling away forgotten.

Both men were rigid with tension, waiting, still waiting, until…

“Go, go, get in the car!” Dean hissed, shoving Sam toward the ladder that lead to the ground.

A white van had pulled up next to the park and two men had jumped out. As Sam and Dean were climbing down the ladder the strangers scooped up the girl and dumped her into the back of the van. Their engine came to life just as Dean was throwing the Impala into gear.

::: NEXT :::

The whole series can be found here.

- Meagan

What Once Was Lost - Sam/Dean - 1/6

2006-12-26T09:33:12Z

Title: What Once Was Lost - 1/6
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: mentions of child torture/murder (no graphic details)
Disclaimer: Of course I don't own them. If I did there would be a lot more touching.
Summary: 13 years ago Sam was left behind while his father and brother went on a hunt. Now, the sadistic cultists that Dean thought his father had destroyed are killing children again and Sam finds out that the long ago hunt didn’t go as smoothly as he had been told.
Author's Notes: This story is complete and has 6 parts all together. It was supposed to be longer, but then I decided I loved this 'verse too much to just be done with it. So there will be much more to come after this. And a BIG hug and thanks to my bestest Supernatural buddie plutogirl10 for holding my hand through this story and telling me I'm wonderful, even when I insist I'm not.

What Once Was Lost

“I think I found our next gig.” Sam looked over at Dean from his bed, computer perched on his knees.

“You think?” Dean asked from his place in front of the bathroom mirror. He wiped the remnants of shaving cream off his face and wandered out of the bathroom to look over Sam’s shoulder.

Sam’s hand slid across Dean’s hip and rested at his back, thumb hooked into the loop at the back of his jeans, fingertips brushing the skin beneath the hem of his shirt. Dean made no acknowledgment of the gesture, other than the subtle shift of his hips closer to Sam’s chair.

“Well, it could be one of our things or it could be some sick freak kidnapping a bunch of kids and torturing them.”

“Kids, huh?” His voice sounded casual, indifferent, but Sam could read the tension in his body like a book. His brother may claim to not like kids, at least when no pretty mothers were around, but Sam knew that Dean went after the creatures that hurt kids with a deep, burning hate.

“Yeah, so far six kids have gone missing in as many days, and this hasn’t been updated since this morning so who knows if whatever it is has taken another. All of them are between the ages of 12 and 14. Four have been found, according to this site, ‘tortured and maimed’ with satanic symbols carved into their skin. The symbols look familiar but I can’t place them. Look.”

Sam clicked on a picture that accompanied the report and an enlargement popped up. On the screen was a picture of a young boy’s chest, covered in knife wounds in strange, archaic shapes. The boy couldn’t have been more than 12.

Sam looked over his shoulder at Dean, whose face had gone deathly pale. “Where is this?” Dean demanded, his voice quiet; dark.

“Uh…” Sam clicked back to the report and quickly scanned the screen. “Pennsylvania. About 70 miles outside of Pittsburg.”

“Fuck!”

Sam jumped when Dean shouted, startled by the anger in his brother’s voice. Dean walked over to the other side of the room and started throwing their freshly cleaned weapons into a bag.

“Get your shit together, we’re leaving,” Dean ordered as the rest of their things followed the weapons.

“Dean-”

“Now, Sam!”

Sam closed the computer and watched helplessly as Dean gathered their belongings and walked out the door. He glanced around the room, grabbing two forgotten knives and his cell phone, and followed Dean out to the car.

Dean was standing over the trunk of the car, staring down at the polished black metal, his faced twisted into a grimace of anger and pain. “We’ll never make it in time,” Sam heard him whisper to himself. He jumped again when Dean’s fist slammed down on the trunk hard enough to leave a dent.

“Dean…” Sam tried again to get his brother’s attention but Dean ignored him. Simply barked a quick ‘get in the car’ as he slammed his own door.

An hour passed in silence, Sam watching his brother drive in speeds far exceeding the signs they passed in a blur, Dean staring out the window with an expression on his face too tortured for Sam to properly read. Every few minutes he would glance down at the clock on the radio and his jaw would twitch, teeth grinding so hard Sam was sure they would start to break soon.

“Dean,” Sam said quietly when the silence became too loud to bear. “What’s going on?”

Dean’s jaw tightened and he breathed in sharply through his nose, his brow furrowed in anger. “I know these sick sons-of-bitches.” He growled, eyes fixed firmly on the road ahead. “I’ve… dealt with them before.”

Sam watched his brother closely but Dean didn’t say anything more. “Why aren’t they dead?”

“They are,” he hissed, hands clenching on the wheel. “They should be. I don’t get it. Dad killed them.”

“Are you sure it’s them?” Sam asked. He was terrified of the look in his brother’s eyes. He had never seen Dean like this before. He truly looked like a hunter. A killer.

“Yes.” Dean’s hands tightened on the wheel and he glanced back down at the clock again. “I know those symbols.”

“Maybe they are the same people. Maybe they’re just… dead.”

“No. No, Dad took care of them. Salted and burned the sons-of-bitches, I know he did. I don’t get it.” He looked down at the clock again and his fist came down on the steering wheel.

Sam reached over and grabbed his hand, holding on tightly when Dean tried to pull away. “Dean, what is going on?” he asked as he pried loose Dean’s tense fingers and carefully set his hand on the seat. He wanted to hold on to his brother, pull him into his arms and hold him until the tension left his shoulders and the darkness left his eyes. But he knew Dean would have none of that.

His brother let out a deep sigh, bringing his hand up to his eyes and rubbing it across his creased face. “13 years ago--fuck, exactly 13 years--Dad and I worked this job. Do you remember? We left you with Pastor Jim. Do you remember?”

“Uh…” Sam racked his memory for his tenth year, trying to think of the things that had happened. “Yeah. You… you were supposed to be gone for like, four days but you were gone almost two weeks.”

“Yeah.” Dean’s hands tightened on the wheel again. “There was this cult. They took kids, every thirteen years. Thirteen kids in thirteen days, every thirteen years. God I hate that number.”

Sam watched as a myriad of emotions rolled across his brother’s face. He breathed deeply, glanced at the clock. “The job went bad. It… but he got them. I know he got them. The sick fucks use these kids… they…”

Sam reached his hand out and touched Dean’s shoulder but Dean jerked away from him. He glanced at the clock again. “They use them for some ritual. They use them for blood magic. They torture them.”

“Oh.” Sam was at a loss for words. That was bad enough, but Dean kept talking.

“Each part of the ritual, one for each kid, lasts twenty-four hours. They take the kids the day before, so they’re ready at… at midnight when they…”

Dean went silent, his jaw clenching, his back rigid. Sam watched him, hating that he couldn’t help. “At midnight they kill one kid,” Sam whispered. “Then they start the next part of the ritual.”

Dean flinched, eyes blinking too fast, glancing down at the clock. They had started in Memphis, more than a ten hour drive to Pittsburg even the way Dean was driving, already late in the night. They would never make it in time to save the girl that had been taken yesterday afternoon.

Sam understood Dean’s dark mood now; the pain in his eyes. It tore Dean’s heart, took away a piece of him, every time they failed to save someone. And to fail a child, to know there was nothing they could do to save the thirteen year old girl, had to be killing him inside.

“Dean… you-”

“Don’t, Sam.” Dean’s hands clenched around the wheel. “Just don’t.” Sam sighed and turned away from his brother to stare out into the darkness outside his window. There was nothing he could say.

***

Hours passed in silence, nothing but the hum of the car beneath them bringing life to the darkness. Dean drove too fast, recklessly fast, even though there was no way. But every time his eyes flicked to the clock he would add a little more speed, clench the wheel a little tighter.

Sam watched the clock too, unable to look away from the bright green numbers that told the story of a child’s death. At midnight Sam sighed, feeling broken already. Dean didn’t look away from the road.

“We have 24 hours until they kill the next kid,” he said, his voice rough, determined. The car sped up just a little more and the world outside flew by in a dark blur.

***

“This is it; this is the town,” Sam said, shutting the atlas he held in his lap and tossing it into the back of the car. It was just after 5 AM. They had made the drive in less than 9 hours, the morning light not even blooming over the horizon yet.

“There’s a police station at the end of this road.” He opened the glove box and searched through the pile of ID’s to find the two he wanted. He placed Dean’s on the seat beside his brother and slipped his into his jacket pocket.

Dean reached over and picked up the fake FBI identification, pocketing it as his eyes scanned the road ahead. “They won’t know anything,” he said. “These people are too good. Dad and I couldn’t find anything on them last time. Who they were, where they were hiding the kids. Nothing.”

“How did you find them?” Dean’s jaw twitched and his eyes went dark.

“I was a decoy,” he said as he pulled into the police station parking lot. “They took me and Dad… Dad followed them.”

“Dad used you as bait?” Sam asked, horrified. “You were just a kid.”

The car turned off and Dean looked at Sam for the first time in hours. “Yeah, well, it worked.”

“You could have been hurt,” Sam argued, angry at the risk their father had taken with his own son’s life.

Dean’s body stiffened and he looked away from Sam. “Let’s go.” He got out of the car, slamming the door behind him so hard the car shook.

***

“I have to say, I‘m glad you’re here.” The sheriff looked exhausted, dark circles under his eyes, lines in his face that shouldn’t be there. “I just don’t know what to do.”

Sam and Dean sat in front of Sheriff Mitchell’s desk, Dean’s knee bouncing; anxious energy needing to move. “After we realized what was happening we sent word out to the whole area, telling them to keep track of their kids, not let them go anywhere alone. But then that girl disappeared right out of her yard. No one even saw it happen.”

He ran a hand over his face and leaned forward, shifting through the files on his desk. “Then there are the ones that don’t even try. This boy was walking home from school all alone. Ryan Hale. He disappeared yesterday. He makes seven, in seven days.”

Sam took the file from him, looking down at the school picture of a young boy, no more than thirteen, that was clipped to the top. He was so young, so innocent. Freckles spattered the bridge of his nose and his big, dark brown eyes stared back at Sam from the file.

Dean took the papers from Sam and stared down at the report. “This says he was reported missing by a gas station attendant?”

The sheriff nodded, a dark, angry look crossing his face. “The mother didn’t even realize he was missing. The attendant said the kid stopped there every day on his way home to get a soda, so when he didn’t show up, and with everything that was going on, he called the police. Sent a guy to the kid’s house to see if he had just been picked up from school or something and the mother said… well, I won’t repeat what she said. Doesn’t even think he’s been taken though. Thinks he’s just pulling some teenage stunt. But I talked to his teachers. He’s not the kind of kid that would do that.”

“She doesn’t care that he’s gone?” Sam asked, angry and confused. How could any mother not care that her child was missing?

“From what my officer said, she probably wouldn’t even remember what he looked like.”

Dean stood abruptly and tossed a hasty ‘thank you’ over his shoulder before leaving the room. Sam watched, helpless and worried.

“Is he okay?” Sheriff Mitchell asked.

Sam nodded and stood, leaning over the desk to shake the sheriff’s hand. “He’s fine, it’s just… cases with kids get to him.”

Mitchell nodded and stood up to see Sam to the door. “You stop these son’s-of-bitches, you hear me? I don’t care what it takes.”

“Yes, sir.”

***

“Are you going to talk to me about this?” Sam asked, his voiced pitched low as they waited for Ryan’s mother to answer her door. Dean hadn’t spoken a word since he had fled the sheriff’s office and Sam was quickly tiring of his stoic, stone-faced silence.

“Nothing to talk about,” Dean muttered, banging angrily on the trailer door for the third time.

“Nothing… what about the fact that I have no idea what’s going on? What about the fact that these people are supposed to be dead? What about the fact that we have no idea where to find this kid and being here isn’t going to help!”

“Sam, shut-”

The door swung open with a bang and the disheveled, drunk woman that filled the doorway barked an angry ‘what?’ at them. Dean turned away from Sam, fists clenching at his sides as his eyes raked over the sorry sight in front of them.

The woman was old before her time, tired and lost in her own addictions. Sam couldn’t even tell if she had once been beautiful or not; she certainly wasn’t now. Sam could hear the barely there growl that came from his brother’s throat and he stepped in front of Dean, blocking his view of the woman.

“Ma’am, we’re from the FBI. My name is Agent Stokes; this is my partner, Agent Williams. We’re here to ask you some questions about your son, Ryan.”

The woman brought a cigarette to her lips, ignoring the hand Sam had held out to her. She took a long drag then flicked it to the ground, coughing as she turned back inside. “Like I told that damn cop, Ryan ain’t missing and he sure as hell ain’t been kidnapped. The ungrateful little bastard just wandered off again. Not the first time.”

Dean moved for the door but Sam blocked him again. “Cool the fuck off or go to the car,” he hissed into Dean’s ear before following the woman into the filthy trailer.

Beer cans and cigarette butts were scattered everywhere, there were dirty dishes piled across every surface in the tiny kitchen; Sam could barely see down the hallway toward the bedrooms. A man lay sprawled across the ancient sofa, a beer bottle in one hand, joint dangling from the limp fingers of the other. Dean followed him into the trailer, breathing harshly through his nose.

“Ma’am, we have reason to believe that Ryan was kidnapped,” Sam said, standing carefully in the middle of the mess. The woman stumbled over to the refrigerator and grabbed a bottle of beer. Sam wondered if she was getting a really early start, or if she hadn’t yet stopped from the night before. His money was on the latter.

“You are aware that 6 other children have gone missing this week?”

The woman waved a hand in dismissal and took a large drink of the beer. “That ungrateful little brat has been nothing but a pain in my ass since he was born. His bastard father up and leaves me with his sorry ass, I take care of him, keep him fed and a fuckin’ roof over his head and the kid runs off every other week.

Tells me he was stayin’ at a friend’s, but he ain’t got no friends. ‘S a fucking freak, that boy.”

Dean growled and lunged at the women, grabbing her by the arms and shaking her. “Listen you bitch, your kid is-”

“Dean!” Sam grabbed the back of Dean’s jacket and pulled him away from the woman, shoving him toward the door. “Go to the car!”

Dean glared at Sam, shaking himself off and straightening his jacket as the woman started screaming. “I’ll have you’re badges! You won’t get away with this! Get out of my fuckin’ house!”

The man on the couch stirred, stumbling to his feet, the beer bottle crashing to the floor. “Who the fuck are you?” He slurred, lurching over his own feet and falling to the ground.

Sam growled and shoved Dean toward the door, forcing him outside as the woman started throwing things at them. A plate shattered by his ear as he pushed Dean outside. “What the fuck was that, Dean?” Sam demanded as they ran back to the car.

Dean spun around and shoved Sam hard, making him stumble back into the hood of the car. “Her son has been taken by a bunch of sick fucks that have been torturing him for 8 fucking hours, and she doesn’t even fucking care!”

“Dean, what if he’s not missing? What if he did just run away again?”

Dean turned away and opened the car door. “No. No, he was taken Sam. I know it. And she doesn’t care. I can’t... even if he did just run away, she should still care. She should… how can she not care?”

His eyes met Sam’s for the first time since they had left Memphis. There was so much pain behind them, tearing into Sam’s heart. “Dean…”

“Let’s go talk to the gas station attendant.” Dean slid into the car and shut the door on Sam’s unspoken question.

::: NEXT :::

The whole series can be found here.

- Meagan

Christmas - JC/Justin

2006-12-24T12:33:03Z

Title: Christmas
Pairing: JC/Justin
Rating: PG (only becuase I managed to slip in the 'f' word a few times)
Warnings: none
Disclaimer: If Santa is real, this time tomorrow he'll be dropping them off under my tree. For now, they still belong to themselves.
Summary: Prompt #92: Christmas. JC just wanted a little alone time. Then everything went wrong.
Author's Notes: The fluff. Dear lord, the fluff. It makes my stomach turn just thinking about it. But Christmas makes me happy, thus my boys must be happy too. Enjoy it while it lasts.

Christmas

It was snowing. It wasn't supposed to be snowing. This was California for fuck’s sake. So, okay, it was higher up in California than he was used to, but still. Snow.

All JC had wanted was a little peace and quiet during the holiday season. His schedule was packed from the 24th on through and beyond the New Year. Christmas with his family in D.C. followed by a concert in Florida followed by the final tweaking of his album before it went to the presses followed by another concert for New Year’s Eve followed by followed by followed by.

So he was borrowing a small cabin in the mountains from a friend for a little bit of alone time before he was tossed into the real world again. And it had been nice. A week all alone, just him and his guitar, and no one there to tell him he needed to do this or be there or a dozen other things.

Then it had started to snow. And this wouldn’t have been so bad, really. JC liked the snow. It was calm and pretty, and as long as he could watch it safely from inside he enjoyed it.

But then the snow hadn’t stopped and now… now he was stuck. There was no way he could drive out of this mess. He had already missed his flight and it didn’t look like he would be leaving any time soon.

Tomorrow was Christmas. His family would all be in Maryland now, celebrating, cooking, opening gifts together. And he was here. In the mountains. In the snow. Alone. On Christmas Eve.

He officially hated snow.

JC scowled out at the swirling white drifts one last time before snapping the curtain closed and stalking back to the fireplace. His guitar lay forgotten on the floor. The fire snapped and sparked, throwing shadows across the room. It wasn’t even night yet but the thick clouds that covered the mountain cast everything into muted darkness.

JC scowled at the fire and pushed the pieces of a new song across the floor. It was a happy, peppy little thing he had started the night he got to the cabin. He was no longer feeling happy or peppy. Before he got frustrated, or bored, and started throwing things into the fire just to watch them burn he packed everything away; guitar and papers sliding carefully back into the guitar case, and put it all in his room.

He did a lot of nothing for a while. Washed the dishes, browsed through his friend’s movies, read a few pages from the book he had brought. But he quickly tired of everything, his mind three thousand miles away with his family.

He was just about to give up and go to bed at… fuck, 6:30 at night, he really was pathetic, when his phone rang. He scrambled through the cabin, looking for the discarded phone before the obnoxious song ran out. What the hell was that anyway? That was the last time he let Chris touch any of his things.

He found the phone just in time to miss the call. Snarling in frustration he peered down at the ‘Unknown’ on the screen. Who would be calling him anyway? He had talked to all of his family already, told them how sorry he was, how much he wished he could be there, he loved everyone and missed them and would make it up to them.

And Joey had called earlier, promising to pass on the information to everyone else that, yes he was safe, no he couldn’t get out, yes he had enough supplies to last the storm, and no he promised he wasn’t going to die up here. So who had called?

His phone rang again, ‘Unknown’ coming back up on the screen. He waited a moment, trying to remember the song that blared at him in horrible too-sharp tones. When it finally clicked in his head he laughed as he opened the phone. Life lesson # 238, even professional singers could sing bad karaoke when there was enough alcohol involved.

“Chasez. What can I do for ya?” he asked the person on the other end of the phone.

“I’m stuck. Can you come get me?” JC pulled the phone away from his ear, staring at it as if he had never seen one before. After a moment he put it back to his ear. “Justin?”

“Yeah,” came the miserable voice on the other end of the phone. “Come get me?”

“Justin, I am stuck in a blizzard in the God-damned mountains. How am I supposed to come get you?” JC demanded, amazed but not shocked. It was so like Justin to ask him for help when he was trapped in a snow storm.

“Umm… because I am too.”

Another glance at the phone. “What?” JC asked, now thoroughly confused.

“Umm…” Justin said again. His voice sounded young, guilty. Like the time he had snuck out of the house when he was 15, stolen his mother’s car and crashed it into a mailbox. He had called JC then, panicked and about 3 minutes away from changing his name and running away to Mexico.

“Justin, what’s going on?” JC demanded, wondering if he should be worried or amused.

“Umm… I’m about a mile away from your cabin. I… tried to get up there in my Hummer, ‘cause it has four wheel drive and a hemi so I thought I could make it. But then I forgot to put on the snow tires, and I almost made it, but then I hit this really big snow drift and when I tried to go over it I got stuck and now I can’t get out. And I’m really sorry, I was just trying to come see you, but now I-”

“Okay, okay, Justin stop.” JC took the phone away from his ear again and muffled it on his thigh, trying hard not to laugh. Only Justin. “Okay, J,” he said after he got himself under control. “Where are you?”

***

Half an hour later, cold, wet, and ridiculously miserable, JC tugged open the door to Justin’s banked Hummer and laughed at the pathetic creature he found inside. “Only you, Justin,” he said, not bothering to hide his laughter this time. “Only you could think you could beat a fucking blizzard.”

Justin looked up from where his head was resting on the wheel. His face was the epitome of miserable. All puppy dog eyes and pouty mouth. “I came to save you,” he said.

JC laughed and reached into the car, pulling Justin down to him and hugging him tightly. “My hero.”

Justin laughed and gripped JC tighter, nuzzling his cold nose into JC’s neck.

It took them twice as long to get back. JC was exhausted after fighting through the knee deep snow once already, and Justin hadn’t thought through his little rescue mission, coming with nothing but a pair of three hundred dollar sneakers and the latest in his William Rast t-shirt collection.

When they finally reached the cabin, Justin in JC’s jacket and both of them wet and frozen to the bone, all JC wanted to do was crash in his nice warm bed and not wake up until New Year. Justin immediately began stripping out of his wet clothes, leaving them in crumpled heaps all the way to the fireplace where he crouched down in nothing but his boxers.

JC chose to change in the privacy of his room, bringing Justin back a pair of sweat pants and a dry t-shirt. Justin pulled them on quickly, shivering next to the fire, then pulled JC down to the floor, rearranging them both underneath the blanket he had taken from the couch until he was comfortably snuggled between JC’s legs, his back to JC’s still-cold chest.

“This is nice,” Justin said, moving farther back into JC’s embrace.

JC smiled, kissed the top of Justin’s head and watched the fire burn.

***

“Wake up.”

JC’s eyes blinked open to find Justin staring down at him, eyes child-bright and smile so big it hurt to look at. “It’s Christmas,” he said, laughing when JC groaned and tried to bury himself back underneath the blanket they had slept beneath the night before.

Justin rolled him over and plopped a mug of steaming liquid onto his chest. JC just glared at him and wrapped his hands around the cup, sipping the steaming hot cocoa as Justin sat down next to him and smiled brightly.

The light coming in from the windows was dull, snow still billowing around the glass in puffs of white flurries. The fire had died down and the whole cabin was freezing, but Justin’s smile, the laughter in his eyes, somehow made everything okay.

“What are you doing here, J?” JC asked, pulling the blanket around his legs. “and why didn’t my phone recognize your number?”

Justin just shrugged, idly twirling his spoon through the melting marshmallows in his own cocoa. “I was heading toward the airport when Joey called me and said you were stuck up here. And I was still going to go, you know. By the way my mom says you owe her a holiday now. She has you scheduled for Easter at her place. Anyway, I was going to go, but then I kept thinking about you up here all alone and… and here I am.

And I had to get a new number. Mine got leaked again. I fielded calls from screaming girls up until yesterday. I sent you a text message.”

He looked up at JC, his smile young and infectious. JC smiled back, then leaned forward, catching Justin’s chocolate flavored mouth in a soft kiss. “Merry Christmas, Justin,” he said.

“Merry Christmas, JC.” Justin smiled again, Christmas tree-bright, then set his cup down and moved over to the fire to stoke it back to life. Once the flames were blazing brightly Justin crawled back over to JC and snuggled back under the blanket, long limbs wrapping around him, pulling him close, and JC decided that he really didn’t mind snow all that much.

END

Little Damn Table

- Meagan

Jo Who? - Sam/Dean

2006-11-25T06:40:25Z

Title: Jo Who?
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Rating: NC-17. PWP, baby!
Warnings: Incest. Duh.
Disclaimer: No. I wish, but no.
Summary: Because, as plutogirl10 stated, IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN SAM GRINDING HIS ASS BACK INTO DEAN'S CROTCH!!!
Author's Notes: This is just a little porny ficlet of the way it should have been in that dirty, dank crawlspace from 'No Exit'. *sigh* If only Kripke would give into his inner slasher. We know you want to. Stop denying it!

Jo Who?

“It’s too narrow, we can’t go any farther.”

Sam looked past Dean into the narrow passageway. “Well, we can’t just turn back. Let me try.”

Dean glared at Sam, sticking his flashlight into his back pocket. “If I can’t fit there’s no way you’re getting your gargantuan body through there. Oomph.”

Dean’s eyes rolled back into his head as Sam tried to squeeze past him in the far-too-narrow space. “My ass is smaller than yours, let me try,” Sam demanded.

Sam’s body slithered into the tiny space between Dean and the wall, bony elbows digging into Dean’s chest, long legs tangling together. “Ow, Sam,” Dean growled, pushing back at his little brother. “What the fuck.”

Sam grunted and elbowed Dean in the side. “Stop pushing. Let me by.”

“It’s too fucking small, Sam,” Dean whined, hands wrapping around Sam’s arm, trying to force him back. “Let’s just… fuck, stop wiggling!”

“Dean, let go of me. I can…” Sam went still, wedged between Dean and the wall, hopelessly tangled with his brother. “Oh. my. god.”

He started giggling, his whole body shaking against Dean’s. Dean couldn’t see his smirk in the dark but he could hear it in Sam’s laugh. His whole body went rigid and he shoved at Sam again, pushing him against the brick wall as Sam continued to laugh.

“Would you shut up,” Dean growled, one knee digging into the back of Sam’s thigh. “I haven’t had sex in a week.”

Sam laughed and turned his head to look at his brother; Dean’s erection pressed against his ass. “I’m fully aware of that,” he giggled. “I tried to fix that problem last night but you wouldn’t let me, remember?”

Dean growled, one hand coming up to smack Sam’s head. “Yeah, with Jo in the next room, that would go over great.”

Sam glared, elbow coming back to dig into Dean’s ribs. “Never stopped you before.”

“Would you just move?”

Sam smirked at Dean over his shoulder, his hips grinding back into Dean’s erection. “Isn’t that what got us into this dilemma in the first place?”

Dean groaned, his head falling back to the dusty plaster wall behind him. They hadn’t had time between hunts recently for much more than a quick hand job in the car, or a dirty, sloppy blowjob behind a gas station. And in the last week they hadn’t even been able to do that.

It had taken every ounce of his willpower to deny Sam’s big, puppy dog eyes last night; the only thing that had stopped him was the thought of Jo walking in on them. And now his downstairs brain was telling him that he was more than ready to do something about that problem. Kidnapping spirits be damned.

“Sam,” Dean growled, hands pushing at Sam’s waist, trying to keep a clear head. Sam just laughed and pushed back.

Dean’s body stiffened as Sam’s ass rubbed against his erection and his hands tightened on Sam’s hips. He shoved Sam hard against the brick, using his whole body to pin him against the dirty wall. He leaned forward, breath ghosting over his brother’s neck. Sam groaned at the wet, warm sensation, biting his lip as his own little problem made itself known. It had been a week for him too after all.

“You wanna play like that?” Dean hissed into Sam’s ear. He carefully untangled one leg from Sam’s and slid his knee between Sam’s thighs. Sam groaned again and pushed back against Dean’s hips. “We can play,” Dean said, tongue snaking out to lick across Sam’s neck, tasting dust and sweat and the sweet taste of Sam beneath it all.

Sam whimpered, his hands clenching into fists on the brick wall. There was no room to move in the tiny space they were occupying. His whole body was pressed tightly against Dean’s, sweat forming and soaking into his shirt as their body heat filled the tiny space.

“Dean, we… the spirit…” Sam protested weakly, but his body was pushing back against his brother, needing him, loving being this close to him despite the dust and dank walls, the possible danger.

“Nu-uh,” Dean laughed into Sam’s ear. “You started this, now we’re gonna finish it.”

“Here, Dean? Are you joking?” But a hard thrust of Dean’s hips against Sam’s told him everything he needed to know. Dean was going to fuck him, right here behind the walls of the haunted apartment building.

Dean’s hands pulled at Sam’s hips, drawing him back against his own body to make room between Sam and the hard wall in front of him. They were wedged in so tightly they could barely move but Dean managed to slide his hands around to the front of Sam’s jeans, opening his belt and zipper together and shoving his jeans and boxers down just past his ass.

Sam moaned, his hands reaching back in search of Dean’s zipper but Dean growled and grabbed his hands, slamming them against the wall beside Sam’s head. His hips pushed forward and Sam bit back a groan when his hot, aching cock rubbed against the cold brick well.

“Don’t move,” Dean growled into Sam’s ear, biting down hard on his earlobe, his hips still pushing against Sam’s.

“Like I fucking can,” Sam whimpered, his cock dripping slick fluid against his stomach and the wall.

Dean hummed in amusement and licked away the sting from his bite. “Suck,” he demanded, lifting two fingers to Sam’s mouth. “It’s all you’re getting.”

Sam groaned and sucked in the digits Dean offered him, biting down on Dean’s knuckles as his tongue slid over and between the two strong, callused fingers in his mouth. Dean’s breath was hot on his neck and the course material of Dean’s jeans was rubbing against his ass, the hard shaft trapped behind them sliding into the crease.

Dean thrust against Sam a few times, fingers still buried in his mouth, then used one foot too kick out Sam’s legs, spreading them wide. Sam overbalanced and jolted, one shoulder landing hard on the wall in front of him, his cheek colliding with the rough brick.

He bit down hard on Dean’s fingers, making Dean yelp and pull them out. “That fucking hurt, asshole,” Sam whined, his head turning to look at his brother in the dark, one hand rubbing at his cheek.

“Don’t be such a fucking baby,” Dean growled, slapping his hand back to the wall.

Then his fingers were at Sam’s ass, pushing in to his tight entrance without prelude. Sam hissed, his hips bucking futilely against the wall. One leg jerked back and caught Dean in the shin, making the other man grunt and push harder.

“Fuck, Dean,” Sam groaned, fingers scrabbling uselessly at the dirty wall. “Just do it. Fuck me.”

Dean grunted and bit down on Sam’s shoulder, his free hand reaching for the button of his jeans. He faltered when Sam rolled his hips, forcing his fingers deeper and rubbing against his straining erection. “Stop fucking moving,” he ordered, trying to pull his hips away from the toomuch sensation.

He shoved Sam’s hips forward with his forearm and quickly undid his pants, letting them drop to his knees as his fingers continued to slide in and out of Sam’s body. “Now, Dean, please,” Sam whined. His whole body was shaking with the effort to stay upright and not come. “Too fucking long.”

“I know, Sam, hold on.” His fingers slid from Sam’s body, drawing a hiss from his brother, and he lined himself up with Sam’s entrance. At the first heated touch of his cock against Sam’s hole they both pushed, and Dean sank in balls deep.

Sam let out a loud yell, the sound bouncing off the stone all around them, and rolled his hips; the best he could do in the cramped space. Dean grunted and pushed forward, his lips coming down on the back of Sam’s neck as one hand reached around him to wrap around his cock.

“The residents are definitely going to think this place is haunted now,” Dean said between clenched teeth.

“Stop talking and fuck me,” Sam demanded, his forehead banging against the arm that was bracing him on the wall as he continued to push back against his brother.

Dean’s hand slid wetly around Sam’s cock, gathering the slick liquid from the tip to ease his grip. “Can’t fucking move,” he groaned, his hips rocking against Sam’s. “Can’t fuck you right.”

“Then do something,” Sam begged. “Anything, please.”

Dean nodded against Sam’s neck and stroked his cock harder, palm sliding around the shaft as his thumb brushed the sensitive underside of the head. Sam hissed and his head fell back against Dean’s shoulder. “God,” he groaned, bucking up into Dean’s hand as best he could with his legs spread so wide.

Dean kissed and licked his way across Sam’s neck and hard jaw, nipping occasionally at the stubbled skin as his hand continued to work Sam’s cock. His own painfully hard cock was begging him to move but he couldn’t do a damn thing but rock forward into his brother’s tight heat.

Their bodies were pressed so tightly together that Dean could feel every knot of Sam’s spine against his chest, every heart beat, every panting breath. His free hand pushed up between them and under Sam’s shirt, mapping the corded muscles and slick skin. Sam groaned when dull nails scratched across his back, leaving red marks neither of them could see.

“Fuck, Dean,” he whimpered, his cock thrusting up into the tight channel of Dean’s fist. His fingers were digging into the wall so hard they stung and he tasted blood on his tongue.

“When we’re done with this job,” Dean whispered into his ear as one hand continued to stroke his cock and the other mapped every inch of his chest and back. “I don’t care where we are tonight, I’m gonna fuck you so hard you won’t be able to sit for a week. I’ll take you from behind, on all fours, and you’ll taste me in your fucking throat. Do you want that, Sam? Do you want me to take you so hard you scream?”

Sam whimpered and pushed back against Dean’s cock, trying to pull him deeper, to push him in harder. “Fuck yes,” he hissed, his legs shaking with the effort to stay standing.

“Good,” Dean said, fingernails scraping at Sam’s hipbones. “Cuz then I’m gonna do it again. And again and again, until the only thing you can do is scream my name, because you won’t remember anything else.”

Dean’s hand twisted harshly around Sam’s cock and gave it one last almost-painful pull, and Sam was screaming, hot fluid washing across Dean’s hand and the wall. Dean gave him a moment to get his bearings and then he was pulling out, yanking Sam’s head around for a hard kiss as he fisted his wet cock and brought himself off with a few hard, unforgiving pulls, his come slashing over his fist and Sam’s ass.

It took a few minutes for them to pull themselves together enough to zip up their pants. Then came the task of untangling themselves and getting out of the tight confinement. They both ended up with a few more bruises and a lot more dust before they extracted themselves from each other and slid out of the crawlspace.

“Great, now my jeans are wet, thanks,” Sam muttered as they dusted themselves off.

“Stop whining.” Dean smacked him on the head and turned around, heading toward the apartment. “Come on. I don’t think the damn spirit is in the walls.”

Sam glared at Dean’s back but obediently followed, smoothing down his hair and pulling out his cell phone so they could locate Jo.

***

Sitting in the empty lot later that day, waiting for Dean to finish filling the sewer, Jo stared at Sam’s face thoughtfully. “Where’d you get that bruise on your cheek?” she asked.

Sam just blushed and muttered something under his breath about small spaces.

END

- Meagan

Inficio Sanctimonia - Sam/Dean - 3/3

2006-11-11T04:55:30Z

Title: Inficio Sanctimonia - Part 3 of 3
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Rating: Oh so NC-17
Warnings: None for this chapter. You know, other than the graphic incest. But then, thats why you're here isn't it?
Disclaimer: I haven't quite figured out the details of the kidnapping yet, so they're still not mine.
Summary: Dean remembers when Sammy lost his virginity, because he was the one that took it.
Author's Notes: This is the last chapter! ~~And it may be just a little cliched but that's beside the point.~~ I hope you've all enjoyed this story as much as I did!

Part One ::: Part Two

Inficio Sanctimonia

The kiss was soft, gentle, as if Sam thought he would break. Dean wanted to tell him that he was the only thing that kept him from shattering. But he would be damned if those words actually came out of his mouth, so he settled for his usual route. He kissed Sam back with everything he had in him to give.

Sam moaned into Dean’s mouth and pulled his brother tight against him, one hand settling at the small of his back, the other sliding through his hair. He could feel Dean’s pulse quicken through his chest.

He had meant for it to be a chaste kiss, a promise of what was Dean’s already. But now his blood was burning and all he knew was that he needed his brother. He needed him to be okay. He needed them to be okay.

Dean’s hands came up to wrap around his neck, nails digging into skin as the kiss deepened, tongues hesitantly meeting between them. The hand at Dean’s back pressed tighter then slid under his shirt, careful fingers pressing against soft skin and hard muscle.

Dean gasped at the gentle touch, pulling away from Sam until he could look at his little brother. “Sammy…”

Sam had to duck his head to look into Dean’s tortured eyes. He nudged Dean’s forehead with his own, their lips so close but not touching. “It’s okay, Dean. I want this.”

Dean shook his head but didn’t pull away. “You shouldn’t. You shouldn’t want this. I… I ruined you. I fucked everything up.”

Sam shook his head and his arm tightened around his brother. Dean was so very vulnerable when it came to Sam or their father. But he was so strong too. Strong enough to keep them alive. Strong enough to love them, no matter what they did to him in return. Sam had relied on that strength all his life.

“You didn’t ruin me, Dean,” Sam said, his thumb brushing across Dean’s cheek bone, over his lips. “You kept me together. You kept me alive. You’re so strong, Dean. I wouldn’t be the same without you. You made me who I am.”

“What, the man that just kissed his own brother? Yeah, that’s really fucking normal, Sam.” Dean pulled away from Sam’s tight grip, sitting down on the bed and dropping his head to his hands. “You’ve spent your whole damn life wanting to be normal, wanting something other than this life. You can’t tell me that it’s all okay now. It’s not okay. This isn’t okay.”

Sam walked slowly over to where his brother sat and knelt in front of him, placing his hands on his knees as he looked up at him from beneath curly bangs. He didn’t say anything; he didn’t know where to go from here, what to say to make Dean understand.

Dean looked down at his brother and wanted to cry, or shoot something. He looked so young, looking up at him from beneath his eyelashes; so damn innocent. The perfect sacrifice. Dean could still hear him in his dreams, see him looking up from the altar with such sweet innocence. “I trust you, Dean.”

But he shouldn’t trust him. He wouldn’t if he knew. If he knew that Dean had never been able to shake Sam’s memory from his mind. He had never forgotten the way Sam tasted. The way his skin felt beneath his hands. The way he cried out so sweetly when Dean thrust into his body.

Those memories had kept Dean awake too many nights. Had driven him into the arms of slutty waitresses and alcohol-soaked men, just to forget. But he never could.

And now Sam was kneeling before him, offering himself again. Offering everything Dean had ever wanted. Sam had said he wanted it. That everything, all that Dean had been so afraid of, was okay.

Dean’s hand was trembling when he touched Sam’s face. Sam smiled when Dean’s thumb brushed over his lips. Kissed it on the second pass. On the third Sam sucked the callused thumb into his mouth and sucked gently.

Dean’s breath hitched and he looked away from the sinful sight that sat before him, his chest heaving as he fought an internal battle that had been raging for a decade inside him. Then, with a strangled moan, his thumb was gone and his lips were covering Sam’s.

Sam immediately rose to his knees and his hands wrapped around Dean’s neck, pulling him closer until Dean was sliding off the bed to the ground and they were touching from mouth to knee.

Sam’s tongue slid out to caress Dean’s lips, and Dean opened his mouth willingly, meeting Sam half way, groaning at the long remember taste of Sammy that filled his mouth and made him so achingly hard it hurt. A decade of pent-up desire crashed through him and it took every ounce of his will to not lay Sam down and take him right there.

Sam for his part was not helping. As with everything else in his life, what he wanted he took. And he really wanted this.

His hands were suddenly everywhere, in Dean’s hair, sliding over his shoulders, and running down his chest; such a contrast to Dean’s memories of the nervous boy he had guided through his first time. This Sam seemed like a completely different person. This Sam was every bit a man.

Before he realized what was happening Dean’s shirt was being tossed aside and Sam’s mouth was latching onto his neck, sucking and biting, marking him. Sam’s fingers were dragging red lines down his back, sliding into the back of his jeans, brushing across his cock.

Sam’s hand wrapped around his cock and Dean started to thrust, his head falling back to give Sam better access to his neck. He bit back the strangled whimpers that tried to break free as his whole body arched with the pleasurepainlovegodSammy.

His little brother’s breath was hot across his neck, his teeth sharp as they claimed him. Dean’s hands came up to grasp Sam’s shirt and he was pulling, exposing smooth skin and strong muscle. Fingers slid across demon-scars and still healing cuts from their last fight.

He didn’t know this body, not like he had known the one from so long ago. Sam had been more private since Dean had pulled him away from Stanford. Hiding his body and his darkest secrets in ways he hadn’t when they were kids. But Dean wanted to learn every inch; memorize it before he lost it.

Sam pulled his hands from Dean’s jeans long enough to strip his shirt off, then they were pulling at Dean’s belt, yanking his jeans and boxers down until his red, leaking cock was exposed. Dean whimpered when the cool air hit his over-heated skin.

Sam smiled into Dean’s neck, his hand wrapping around Dean’s cock as he continued to kiss and lick his way down to his brother’s collarbone and farther until his tongue swiped across Dean’s hard nipples.

“Sammy,” Dean hissed, one hand coming up to cradle his brother’s skull. Sam’s hand was working quickly over his cock, palm sliding over the shaft, callused thumb brushing over the head and teasing the leaking slit.

He shouldn’t like this. He shouldn’t need this. But he did; more than anything else in his life, he needed this from Sam. From his baby brother. And it shamed him, made him sick to think about, but he couldn’t deny it.

And he certainly couldn’t deny Sam. He had given Sam everything he had in him to give, and gladly. He had never begrudged Sam that. But this… this would only hurt his brother and Dean didn’t think he could do that. Not even with Sam begging for it in his ear.

“Sam…”

“Hush, Dean,” Sam whispered, his hand sliding so sweetly around his cock. The feel of Sam’s soft skin under his fingers, the warm waft of Sam’s breath against his neck and the slip-slide of his hand, was too much for Dean to handle.

Dean’s hand tightened in Sam’s hair. His hips thrust into Sam’s tight fist. “Sam…” he hissed. “Sammy, I’m gonna…”

“It’s okay, Dean,” Sam whispered into his ear, his hand working faster. “Come for me. It’s okay.”

Dean gasped, fingernails digging red crescents into Sam’s shoulders, and came hard, hot liquid spilling over Sam’s fingers. Sam held him tightly, free hand sliding through Dean’s sweaty hair while the hand on Dean’s cock continued to stroke him gently through the aftershocks.

After a minute Dean’s head lifted from where it had been resting on Sam’s shoulder and he gave Sam a careful push. Sam’s hands slowly slid away from Dean’s body and he looked down at Dean, suddenly nervous, suddenly so afraid that he had completely ruined everything.

Dean saw the poorly veiled fear and was reminded that this is still his Sammy. Older and more mature, but still his sweet, gentle Sammy with his big puppy dog eyes.

But Dean was never very good with words--what did you say to something like this anyway?--so he did what he knew. His hands slid down Sam’s chest and twisted in the hem of his jeans.

“Bed, now,” he hissed into Sam’s ear, nipping the lobe hard enough to hurt. Sam moaned, turned his head for a kiss, then scrambled up onto the rumpled motel bed.

Dean moved more slowly after him, sliding out of the rest of his clothes as he went. Sam recognized his ‘I’m-not-sure-what-to-do-but-I’m-going-to-do-it-anyway’ look. Sam smiled encouragingly and slid his hands down his chest, teasing Dean with the view as long fingers slid past his nipples and into the hem of his jeans.

Dean’s knees hit the bed and his hands slapped at Sam’s, grinning at Sam’s frustrated whimper as his fingers quickly rid his brother of his jeans and boxers. Sam’s red, leaking erection sprang free and his hips bucked up into the cool air.

Dean’s smiling lips descended to Sam’s stomach, brushing across soft skin, tongue dipping into Sam’s bellybutton. His hands slid across strong, quivering thighs and wrapped around Sam’s slim hips.

Sam squirmed underneath him, hands fluttering to Dean’s shoulders then down to the bed, as if he didn’t know what to do with them. Dean licked a long, wet line across the dip between Sam’s thigh and hip, fingernails digging crescents into Sam’s thighs to match the ones on his shoulders. Marks that would stay for days. “Dean, come on,” Sam hissed, his hands wrapping tightly in the bed sheets.

Dean smiled and nipped at the pale skin beneath his lips then slid farther down Sam’s body. “I’ve got you, Sammy,” he whispered before taking all of Sam’s hard length into his mouth.

Sam gasped and his hips bucked up into the hotwettoomuch sensation that enveloped him. Dean’s fingers tightened on Sam’s hips, strong arms holding him down as Dean sucked and licked until Sam was whimpering.

“Jesus Christ, Dean,” Sam hissed, his hands sliding into Dean’s hair, pulling tight.

Dean groaned, his own hips thrusting down toward the mattress, cock twitching in spite of his own resent release. He sucked harder, teeth barely scraping the underside, throat working around the head.

It wasn’t long before Sam was moaning his release, hand tightening in Dean’s hair before falling limply to the bed as Dean gently worked him through the orgasm until it became almost painful.

Sam pushed weakly at his brother until Dean released him and sat down on the bed, staring down at Sam with a look Sam didn’t recognize. Sam propped himself up on his elbows, eyebrows knotting in concern. “Dean-”

“Promise me,” Dean said, cutting Sam off mid-sentence. “Promise me…”

His question was left unfinished, but Sam knew all the things he wanted to say. Promise me this is okay. Promise me you want this. Promise me you won’t leave.

Sam sat up and slid across the bed, fighting his bodies lethargy, until he was pressed up against his brother’s side. Dean tried to pull away when Sam gently cupped his face in his too-large hands, the snarky, protective side of him wanting to make a mocking comment, wanting to run.

But Sam just held on tighter and turned his head so they were eye to eye. Dean would never ask this again, at least not so openly, so vulnerably, so Sam had to make sure he understood now.

“I promise, Dean.”

Dean’s hands slid around Sam’s hips and he nodded, his eyes closing as his forehead pressed against Sam’s, pushing hard. And Sam knew--like he knew what it meant when Dean’s hands carefully slid over the hood of the Impala but he wasn’t really looking at the car--what Dean meant.

I want to believe you. But I can’t.

Well, Sam could work on that. He had a lifetime after all. He pulled on Dean’s shoulders, pushing and cajoling until they were both arranged under the covers, close but not touching.

Dean glared at Sam, one hand sliding beneath the blankets, ghosting over Sam’s skin and pulling him closer. Sam smiled and turned over onto his side, one arm draping across his brother’s stomach, his forehead resting on Dean’s shoulder.

In the darkness he heard Dean sigh, then his breathing slowly evened out and he was asleep. Sam slid closer to him, his ear resting over Dean’s heart, legs tangling together under the covers, the morning sun casting its golden light across the dingy brown carpet.

***

Sam watched Dean sleep late into the day, a myriad of emotions changing his soft features with his troubled thoughts. Sam knew full well that his brother wasn’t okay with this. He may want it, but there was too much inside him that told him it was wrong, it would ruin everything, it would never work.

And he knew that Dean still worried that Sam was going to leave him someday. He knew that no matter how many promises he made, how many times he told Dean that he was staying, he could never undo the hurt he had caused when he left. In the back of Dean’s mind there would always be the fear that Sam was going to leave him again.

But Sam wasn’t going to leave. He had decided a long time ago that Stanford was a part of his past. He didn’t want to loose his brother. He couldn’t loose him, not again. Yes, he wanted to be normal; wanted to get away from the danger and the lies and the dirty motel rooms. But he couldn’t have that and his brother.

So he had made his choice and that’s why he was here, in some nameless town in a cheap motel, his older brother mumbling nonsense words as he drooled onto Sam’s shoulder. A crease formed between his eyebrows and Sam gently ran a hand through his hair, long fingers sliding over his forehead.

Dean stirred under his touch, his body twisting around Sam’s for a brief moment before he woke up and pulled away. He blinked up at Sam, confusion written across his face before the memories come pushing through his subconscious.

Sam watched, apprehensive as Dean threw one arm over his eyes, his body rigid, his mouth pulled into a thin line. “Dean?” Sam asked, one hand sliding across his brother’s shoulders.

“My head feels like it’s going to explode,” Dean groaned, his eyes still hidden from Sam. “Can you get me some advil?”

Sam nodded even though Dean couldn’t see him and walked over to their bags, rummaging through until he found the first aide kit. “On second thought, make it Vicodin,” Dean whined, turning over on the bed so he could bury his face in the pillows.

“That’s what you get for drinking an entire bottle of vodka on your own.” Sam sat on the bed next to Dean, setting the pills on the bedside table and ignoring Dean’s grunting protest when Sam’s hands slid across tense muscles and started massaging his neck.

“I’m sorry,” Sam said quietly, his fingers carefully kneading out the knots in Dean’s shoulders.

Dean went still beneath Sam’s hands. “Don’t even try to start, Sam,” Dean growled, his back rigid. “We’re not ‘talking’ about this.”

Sam glared at the back of Dean’s head. “Yeah, because that’s done us so much good in the past.”

Dean sat up abruptly, knocking Sam’s hands away and reaching for the pills, swallowing them dry. He stood up and walked over to their bags, pulling out a semi-clean pair of jeans and slipping them on over his bare hips.

Sam watched him, frustrated and hurt. He was getting fed up wit Dean’s ‘no emotions ever’ policy. He needed them to talk about this. Standing up--and preparing for a fight--he walked over to where Dean was silently repacking their bags and spun him around, slamming him back against the wall.

“Dude, what the fu-”

Sam’s mouth covered Dean’s, cutting off any protest he was going to make, his hands pinning Dean’s to the wall so he couldn’t push him away. Dean grunted and struggled, but Sam knew he didn’t really want to get away. He’d be gone already if he did.

Sam’s tongue slid past Dean’s lips, tasting and claiming. If he thought he could get away with it he would pull Dean outside and kiss him in front of anyone who was there to see. He wanted Dean to know that this, whatever this happened to be, was not something meant only for the shadows, to be hidden away in dark, secret places.

He pulled back with a final kiss to Dean’s slick, red lips. Dean started to say something but Sam covered his mouth with one large hand. “Dean, don’t, okay? Just don’t. I… I don’t want us to be ashamed of this. I mean, I know it’s not normal but… we’re not normal. You said it yourself, this is all we have.” Dean turned his head away, eyes going dark, but Sam turned him back; forced Dean to look him. “It’s just you and me, Dean. Nothing else matters. Nobody matters. I don’t want this to be our dirty little secret. It’ll ruin us.”

Dean looked back at Sam as if he had just suggestion they become Satan worshipers. “Yeah, okay, Sam. I’ll just run outside and tell everybody that I gave my little brother a blowjob this morning.”

“Dean-”

“No, Sam!” Dean pushed Sam’s body away, sliding out of the trap of his strong arms. “We’re brothers! Brothers, Sam. This isn’t like the other things we do. This is wrong! It’s-”

“Why is it wrong?” Sam almost laughed when Dean gave him his patented ‘what the fuck’ look. “Why is it wrong?” he repeated, his face showing honest curiosity.

Dean looked around the room as if he were expecting demons or men with hidden cameras to pop out of the walls. “I don’t even know how to respond to that,” he said, shaking his head in confusion.

“Dean, it’s only wrong because other people say it is.” Sam reached out and wrapped his hand around Dean’s neck, pulling him back so they were pressed up against each other again, their hearts beating in rhythm. “We’re both consenting adults. Neither of is being forced, or blackmailed, or coerced into this. Neither of us is brainwashed or under a spell. We both want this, Dean. And neither of us is being hurt by it. So why is it wrong?”

Dean stared down at the ground, his hands tightly curled around Sam’s shoulders, his forehead creased in thought. “I… but… I mean, we’re… Well shit.”

Sam laughed and bent down to kiss Dean’s jaw. “It’s only wrong because other people say it is. And when have you ever cared what other people think?” He placed another kiss on the corner of Dean’s mouth, watching Dean’s expression as he slowly gave in. “I’m not saying we should go around telling everyone we meet, but it doesn’t have to be something we’re ashamed of. It doesn’t have to be something we hide. Most people we meet think lovers before they think brothers anyway.”

Dean smiled and nodded, thinking about Michael and the Pikes. “Two queens,” he laughed under his breath.

“What?” Sam asked, his hands running across Dean’s bare shoulders. Dean just shook his head and leaned up to find Sam’s mouth, his hands sliding through Sam’s hair to pull him closer.

Sam smiled into the kiss, his arms wrapping around Dean’s shoulders, molding their bodies together as Dean claimed his mouth. Soon they found themselves stumbling toward the bed, awkward and graceless as they tried to keep mouths and bodies touching.

Dean finally pulled away long enough to pull his brother’s worn t-shirt off, then he shoved Sam hard, sending him sprawling to the bed in a clumsy heap. Dean quickly crawled up after him, straddling his boxer-clad hips as he attacked Sam’s mouth with abandon, biting his lips and sucking on his questing tongue.

Sam’s hands slid up Dean’s back and then back down across his shoulders and farther, thumbs brushing Dean’s hard nipples, causing his brother to hiss and buck his hips. Sam moaned into Dean’s mouth, hips thrusting up to meet Dean’s, whimpering when his hard cock slid across Dean’s jean covered groin.

Dean continued to map every inch of Sam’s mouth, his hips moving in small, driving circles as Sam’s hands slid down across his stomach and into the hem of his jeans to pop the button open. The sound of his zipper mixed with their harsh breaths and Dean bit his lip to keep from crying out when Sam finally freed his aching erection.

“Fuck, Sam,” he hissed when Sam’s large hand wrapped around his cock. Sam just smiled and stroked harder, his hips rocking in counter-rhythm to Dean’s, creating a perfect friction that had them both panting into each other’s mouths.

Dean finally pulled away when he couldn’t breathe, his mouth immediately latching on to Sam’s neck, nipping and sucking hard, leaving dark red marks that would bruise before long. Dean’s whole body was vibrating, remembering what it had ached for for so long.

Sam was whimpering as Dean slowly made his way down from his neck to his collarbone, tongue sliding across sharp bone, and then down to his chest. Sam’s hands curled around Dean’s shoulders, pushing him down farther, his eyes and lips begging.

Dean just smiled and nipped at his bellybutton, tongue briefly flicking inside and making Sam gasp. Their first time together Dean had been denied the time and privacy he wanted to give Sam’s body the attention it deserved. And this morning… well, he had been too confused and desperate to really make it count. This time he intended to leave his mark on Sam, in every sense of the word. He wanted to ruin Sam for everyone else.

His hands curled around Sam’s hips, thumbs brushing over sharp bones as he forced Sam’s hips down to the mattress. Sam whimpered, pushing against Dean’s hold, his hands clenching in the bed sheets as Dean continued to map every inch of Sam’s skin with his tongue.

“Dean,” Sam’s voice was strained, desperate already, and Dean laughed.

“We’re going to have to work on your staying power, little brother,” he teased, one hand sliding across Sam’s thigh, tickling the fine hairs and slipping beneath the leg of his boxers. “I mean really, you lasted longer the first time than you did this morning.”

Sam growled, his hips bucking when Dean’s fingers casually bushed across the head of his cock. “Do you have any idea how long it’s been since I’ve gotten laid?” The last words fell off in a deep groan, Sam’s head falling back to the pillows as Dean’s hand wrapped around his aching cock.

“I can imagine.” Dean’s hand slid out of Sam’s boxers and he moved until he was straddling his brother’s hips again. Dean knew Sam hadn’t been with anyone since Jessica’s death. Every advance from every hopeful girl they had met, and every man, had been denied and Sam had gone back to the hotel, pretending to be asleep when Dean finally came home so he wouldn’t have to talk about it.

Dean leaned down and kissed Sam carefully, telling him with mouth and tongue and hands all the things he couldn’t say out loud. And Sam seemed to know, in that annoying way he had, exactly what Dean was telling him.

His hands slid up Dean’s back and wrapped around his shoulders, holding him close as they kissed, long languid meetings of lips and tongue and teeth. They spent long minutes just like that, hands roaming across unfamiliar skin as their mouths mapped and put to memory every touch and taste and smell they could find.

Dean could only remember two people in his entire life he had ever wanted to spend time knowing. Most of the people he fucked were just that, a quick fuck to find release. There was never any emotion; any reason to think about what was happening or what it meant.

One of them was lost to him. Buried beneath the weight of demons that he carried on his back. And the other, whom he had feared was lost too, was promising him everything now.

This thing with Sam was far too new to categorize; all he knew was that he was happier than he had been in a very long time. Since before Dad’s death, before he had pulled Sam away from Stanford, before his world had collapsed beneath the spinning wheels of a bus headed for California.

Dean sat back, his lower back resting against Sam’s raised thighs and watched his brother, memorizing the sight of Sam’s swollen lips and flushed skin, the soft, unsure smile on his face. Dean smiled back then leaned down for one more kiss before moving off of Sam’s body.

Dean slid his fingers beneath the waistband of Sam’s boxers and tugged carefully, pulling the damp cloth over his erection, making Sam gasp. Dean pulled the material off Sam’s freakishly long legs and as each foot slid free from the cloth Dean lifted it to his lips for a kiss then gently set it back down on the bed. Sam’s desperate whimpers turned to a soft laugh and he blushed, remembering that long ago hunt.

Smiling to himself Dean stood up and slid out of his jeans, then walked back over to their bags and found the box and small tube tucked down into the bottom of his. When he turned back to Sam he almost stumbled over his own feet at the sight that greeted him.

Sam’s eyes were dark and dilated, fixed firmly on Dean as his hand slid casually over his red, weeping cock. His bottom lip was lost behind his teeth and his whole body was tense and slick with sweat, his eyes begging Dean to come back.

Dean tossed the condoms and lube onto the bed and knelt beside Sam again, slapping his hand away before bending down to lap at the pre-come leaking from the tip. Sam gasped, one hand shooting out to slide into Dean’s short hair, not controlling, just holding on as Dean’s tongue slid across sensitive flesh. But as Sam’s breathless whimpers turned into the low, desperate moan that had signaled his release that morning Dean backed off, laughing again at Sam’s displeased whimper.

“Stamina, Sammy,” Dean laughed. “We really need to work on your stamina.”

Sam glared up at him, chest heaving with his harsh breaths. “Just shut up and fuck me, would you?”

Dean’s eyes went dark and his mouth watered at the thought of being buried in that tight heat he remembered so well. But before he had even tossed Sam to the bed he knew that wasn’t how he wanted this thing to go; not this time.

Dean shook his head and sat back on his heels, staring down at Sam with a look his little brother couldn’t read. “No?” Sam asked, sitting up to look at Dean, his eyes wide in confusion. “What…?”

Dean hesitated for just a moment, then he crawled to the head of the bed and sat down against the headboard, his eyes dark, vulnerable, as he spread his legs in a silent invitation. Sam swallowed hard at the sight before him, his heart trying to beat its was out of his chest as he realized what Dean was saying.

“Fuck, Dean,” he whispered in awe. Then he was crawling into the space between Dean’s legs. His hands slid around Dean’s face, cupping his jaw as he brought Dean forward into a searing kiss. Dean’s hands curled around Sam’s shoulders as if he was holding onto a lifeline.

“I’ll make it good for you,” Sam promised when he pulled away from the kiss.

Dean nodded but Sam could see the tension around his eyes. He kissed Dean again then slid down the bed, pulling Dean with him until his was laying flat on his back. Sam smiled, his heart pounding in his chest as he kissed a long line from Dean’s jaw to his navel, carefully caressing sweat-slick skin with his hands as he kissed and licked and nipped around his nipples, abs, and bellybutton.

Each sharp bite made Dean gasp above him and Sam could slowly feel the tension seeping away as he effectively distracted his brother from what was going to come. Dean’s hips arched up toward Sam’s mouth as Sam slowly kissed his way across his stomach and dipped his tongue into the grove between hip and thigh.

Sam’s hand slid away from Dean’s carefully thrusting hips, reaching for the bottle of lube Dean had thrown onto the bed earlier. He continued to rain soft, biting kisses across Dean’s lower body while he popped the lid on the bottle and squeezed a generous amount of the slick gel onto his fingers.

Sam’s fingers found their way between Dean’s spread legs, one fingertip gently brushing against the tightly clenched opening. Dean didn’t quite hide his gasp of surprise, or the way his thighs tensed up at Sam’s first careful touch.

“Dean…”

“Sam, just fucking do it, would you? I don’t need all this.” Dean hissed, his hands clenching tightly in the sheets.

Sam just huffed and shook his head. “Not when you’re this tense, Dean,” he said, one finger still slowly circling Dean’s opening. “I’m going to prep you first.”

“I’m not a fucking virgin,” Dean hissed under his breath.

“What?”

Dean growled and propped himself up on his elbows to glare down at his little brother. “Sam, it doesn’t matter how much you prepare me, the second you shove that gargantuan cock of yours up my ass I’m gonna tense up.”

“Dean, maybe we shouldn’t…”

Dean whimpered and flopped back down on the bed, throwing one arm over his eyes. “Sam.” He sounded like a petulant child, fighting with his parents to stay up just a little later. “Please, just fuck me? I want this, I swear, I’ve just…”

Sam scooted farther up the bed, lying out beside his brother, fingers still gently stroking Dean’s entrance as he waited for the other man to finish what he was saying. Dean’s arm slowly peeled away from his eyes so that he could glare up at Sam.

“I haven’t done this in a while,” Dean said slowly, quietly, as if frightened to reveal such intimate details about himself.

Sam leaned down and kissed his brother’s swollen lips, teasing the bottom one away from Dean’s teeth before pulling back enough to look into his eyes. “How long?” he asked quietly. As the soft words brushed across Dean’s ear one finger slid past the tight ring of muscles Sam had been playing with, making Dean gasp, his hips bucking up into the sweet sensation.

“How long?” Sam asked again, another finger carefully slipping in beside the first. Dean moaned, his hips thrusting down towards Sam’s fingers, taking them deeper as Sam gently nipped along his jaw line.

Dean’s whole body seemed to shift with the gentle movement of Sam’s fingers and both hands came up to curl around Sam’s shoulders. “A long time,” he hissed, his breath starting to come out in soft, needy pants. “Not since… he- he was the only one.”

His eyes closed again, blocking out Sam’s wide, anxious look. He didn’t think he could handle this. He had always been so vulnerable when it came to Sam. This thing between them… it was sure to kill him.

Sam’s mouth settled over Dean’s, not connecting, just a soft ghosting of breath across his lips. The words ‘thank you’ brushed across his lips and reached his ears but he didn’t know what Sam meant.

He didn’t have Sam’s psychic abilities, which aren’t so knew when it comes to his big brother. Sam has always been able to tell what Dean was thinking, and what he was feeling. Dean’s never been able to work his way through Sam’s mind. He just knows when Sam needs him, even when Sam doesn’t. And he knows his baby brother needs him now.

Dean’s mouth reached up to meet Sam’s and his whole body surged up with him, begging where his mouth won’t. Sam murmured something into Dean’s mouth and then he moving, pulling his fingers from Dean’s body and positioning himself between Dean’s spread thighs.

Sam smiled, raining kisses down on Dean’s shoulders and neck. When he reached for his own cock to slick himself up Dean grabbed for his hand, dragging it back up to where the condom lay forgotten beside his head.

Sam’s eyebrows rose. “Do we need that?”

Dean nodded, eyes not meeting Sam’s. The first time he hadn’t worried about it, he had always been a stickler for protection, but he hadn’t been so careful over the past few years. “This time,” he said.

Sam nodded and opened the packet with his teeth, then slowly slid it over his aching cock. He kissed Dean again then carefully slicked himself up, groaning in pleasure as he lined himself with Dean’s entrance.

Dean’s hands slid up to Sam’s face, holding him in place so they were looking into each other’s eyes as Sam slowly slid inside him. Dean’s hands tightened around Sam’s jaw he bit back the gasp that wanted to break free of his chest.

Sam stilled almost immediately, giving Dean time to adjust to the intrusion. He peppered kisses across Dean’s face and hands, ignoring the petulant glare that his brother was giving him. “Move, Sam,” Dean hissed, his hips thrusting up into Sam’s body, thighs tightening around his hips.

Sam nodded and pushed into Dean, stilling again when he was seated fully in the tight heat of his brother’s body. Dean groaned and shifted, and Sam pulled back out slowly, tortuously slowly, his cock dragging across Dean’s prostate.

Dean’s whole body arched with the pleasurepain sensation, and Sam thrust forward again, harder this time. Dean threw his head back, his hands tightening around Sam’s shoulders. “Fuck,” he groaned. “Come on, Sammy, show me what you’ve got.”

“Appealing to my competitive side, Dean?” Sam pulled back and thrust even harder, rocking Dean’s whole body.

Dean grinned around his groan of pleasure. “Fuck me,” he demanded, heels on the back of Sam’s thighs, pulling him closer.

Sam laughed. “Okay,” he said, thrusting hard again.

And then suddenly Dean’s whole world shifted and he was on his knees facing the wall, Sam’s hands pinning his to the headboard as he pushed back into Dean’s body with one smooth stroke. Dean stifled the scream that threatened to tear from his throat as Sam started fucking him like it was the last time, not the first.

“Oh, fuck yeah,” Dean groaned, his hips pushing back to meet each of Sam’s powerful thrusts.

Sam draped himself across Dean’s back, hands tightening around Dean’s, their bodies molding to one another’s like they were nothing more than an extension of each other. Their rhythm was perfect, a sweet push and pull that had them both crying out in the dark hotel room as they moved together.

Sam whispered dirty things into Dean’s ear, a filthy litany of ‘fuck’ and ‘so tight’ and ‘so fucking hot like this, Dean’. Dean just held on tightly and let Sam wash away the memories of that tiny back room behind the grocery store.

Every brush of fingers against his hips, every soft kiss to the back of his neck, every whispered ‘I love you’ nestled between lewd words helped heal the wounds left on his soul so long ago. His head came back to rest on Sam’s shoulder and Sam nipped at his jaw line, smiling into his skin as he continued to thrust into him.

“Is it good, Dean?” Sam asked, his hand sliding from Dean’s hip to his leaking cock, giving it a slow, hard pull. “Is it good?”

Dean tried to laugh, he really did. It was the most ridiculous question he had ever heard in his life. But he couldn’t get it out past the deep moan that Sam was pulling from his throat with the too-slow drag on his aching cock. So he settled for the truth and nodded against Sam’s neck, his hips stuttering in their thrust against Sam’s hand.

“You’re so fucking hot like this, Dean,” Sam said, his own rhythm faltering as the wet heat surrounding him tightened, pulling him deeper into Dean’s shuddering body. “So fucking beautiful. I wanna see you like this every day. Every fucking day for the rest of our lives.”

His hand sped up on Dean’s cock, a hard twisting pull that had Dean’s whole body shaking in moments. One of Dean’s hands peeled away from the headboard and wrapped around Sam’s neck, fingers digging into his hair and pulling hard.

Sam cried out, his hand tightening around Dean’s cock, and came hard, his mouth finding Dean’s shoulder, biting hard as his body jerked through the orgasm. Dean hissed as pain mixed with pleasure and followed Sam into ecstasy, hot come splashing over Sam’s hand.

As they came down from their high Sam’s weight pushed them forward and they slid in a boneless heap to the bed, tangled around each other, panting hard. Dean laughed and his eyes blinked open, seeing nothing but Sam’s sweaty mop of hair.

“Stamina, Sammy,” he said, one hand running lazily through Sam’s hair. “You have got to work on your stamina.”

Sam turned his head to glare at his big brother, one sticky, come covered hand sliding into Dean’s line of sight. Sam smirked and slid one finger into his mouth, tongue coming out to lick the pearly liquid from his skin. Dean groaned and his hips gave a half-hearted stutter.

“Care to help me with that?” Sam asked lazily as he continued to lick away the evidence of Dean’s orgasm.

“Mmm. Hell yeah.” Sam smiled and leaned in for a kiss but Dean bit at his lips and pushed him away. “Tomorrow.” Dean laughed at Sam’s pout and stretched out on the bed, pushing and coaxing Sam to move with him until they were side-by-side, Sam’s head resting on Dean’s shoulder.

They stayed in silence for some time, watching the light play beneath the curtains and cast shadows across the bed. Dean stared at the ceiling and tried not to think about much. He knew where his thoughts would lead him, and then the calm peace that had settled over him would vanish again. He knew it wouldn’t last long anyway; he wanted to keep it as long as he could.

But Sam, he knew, was thinking far too much. Over-analyzing every move Dean made, every breath he took. Dean could practically hear his brother’s gears grinding away. Trying to think of a way to ‘fix’ Dean.

Dean knew he couldn’t be fixed. Not completely. He had lost too many pieces along the way to ever be entirely whole again. But Sam’s warm presence against his side, his soft hair on Dean’s shoulder and hot breath across his skin, was enough for Dean. He was a simple man; this was all he needed.

“Dean?” Sam asked after a while. And Dean knew that voice. It was the one that said ‘I want to ask a question you’re not going to like’. Dean could think of quite a few questions that Sam could ask right now that he wouldn’t like.

“Shut it, Sammy,” Dean said quietly, one hand running through Sam’s soft hair.

“But Dean-”

“Sam. Later okay? I promise. Just go to sleep.”

Sam laid his head back down on Dean’s chest, but the set of his shoulders told Dean he wasn’t happy. “It’s the middle of the afternoon.”

“Don’t care.”

“We’ve been sleeping all day.”

“So.”

“Dean.” And there was the whine that turned Sam from lover to little brother.

Dean smacked him on the head and Sam shouted in protest and then suddenly they were wrestling, grappling like kids as they pushed and kicked. Hair was pulled, dirty shots taken, and somewhere between the bed and the floor someone was bitten. Finally they ended up in a heap on the floor, arms and legs tangled as they panted and groaned.

“I hate you,” Dean growled, rubbing at the scratch marks across his neck.

“You love me,” Sam laughed. He propped himself up on one elbow and smacked Dean’s hands away from his neck, then leaned down to kiss the red marks he had made.

Dean let out a half-hearted growl and let Sam burrow under his arm, his head butting up under Dean’s chin. “I’m not sleeping on the floor, Sam,” Dean grumbled.

“Mmm.”

“Sam, I’m serious.”

“Mmm.”

“Sam.”

…

“Sam!”

END

- Meagan