With Spit and a Prayer

Many thanks to Starflow, AngelJade, Mikou, From Across the Pond, and kimmy for their awesomely kind reviews. You guys just leave me blushing, for serious.

For those who were wondering if the last chapter was the end, well, here's your answer. Don't worry, I'll let you know when this beast is done.

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With Spit and a Prayer, Chapter Twenty-Three

Two hundred and eleven days
----
“How are you finding living with Sam again?”

Dean sighed. “It’s OK,” he said, and really, that was totally fucking informative, right? Because living with Sam was... Was hard, every day waking up and he was just there, like nothing had ever happened, like they could just be brothers, be like they had been. And they were, sometimes, nights when Dean didn’t have to go out and hustle and Sam had had a good day and wasn’t exhausted, they would watch TV and Dean would crack jokes and Sam would grin, and it would be like before. Except that Sam crashed out at ten, dosed up on sleeping pills, and Dean took hours to fall asleep himself because he was afraid of dreaming, even more than before, afraid of waking up hard and finding Sam watching him, expecting. And that wasn’t all, because Sam was getting better, God, some days, the good days, Dean could hardly believe how far he’d come, but Dean never closed his eyes without wondering if when he opened them, Sam would be gone again, staring at nothing or worse, staring at something Dean couldn’t see (or gone for good, too many pills and Sam had never tried it, as far as Dean knew, but it didn’t stop Dean from being afraid). So living with Sam was hard, it was painful, and at the same time it was so much better, Dean hadn’t felt so alive in months, and on some days, the good days, he felt like Dean, and on the bad days he was there for Sam (and Sam was there for him), and that was better, too.

“OK?” Horst asked, and Dean thought probably he should say something else, maybe tell the doc about how he felt, that was what he was there for, right? Except he hated this, having to talk about his feeling every other damn day, and Horst was a fucking bastard, never satisfied, always wanting Dean to spill his guts until there was nothing left. Well, Dean was a bastard, too, and right now, he was pretty much not feeling like talking.

“Yeah,” he said. “It’s OK.”

Horst nodded, didn’t even look pissed off. Dean had been through this often enough by now to know it took a hell of a lot to make Horst show any kind of emotion other than I’m not judging you, you can tell me anything, but it didn’t stop him trying. He wondered if Horst hated their sessions as much as he did. He figured he was probably the worst patient on the face of the planet. Well, good.

“Have you had sex since you moved back in?” Horst asked.

Fuck. That was the fucking secret weapon, and Dean never won these ones. And he knew, he knew that this was important, he wasn’t an idiot, he knew that for all the shooting the shit about trips to the store and watching TV and how did he feel about that, it was this that Horst was always aiming for. “No,” he said, and hoped that would be the end of it, his shoulders aching from too much time bent over a pool table and he just wanted to go back to the motel and be done.

“But you’re still sexually attracted to Sam?” Horst prodded.

“Jesus,” Dean said. It was what he always said, because no matter how many times they talked about this, it never got any easier, he never got used to that image of himself, sexually attracted, fucking lusting after his fucked-up little brother who he was supposed to look out for. Jesus. Jesus Christ.

“Dean?”

The man never fucking gave up, and Dean felt his hands curl into fists and remembered waking up gasping and sweating two nights before, fighting down nausea and painfully hard, Sam passed out in the next bed and thank Christ the pills were strong. “Yes,” he said. Fuck you.

Horst waited, but Dean wasn’t saying anything else. Finally, the doc leaned back a little in his chair and wrote something down. “When do you find yourself attracted to Sam?”

That was a new one. Dean stared, then shook his head. “What?”

“Do you find yourself having sexual thoughts about him at all times?” Horst asked. “Or is it only in certain circumstances. When you masturbate, for example.”

Dean was pretty sure he was going to throw up, because masturbate and Sam shouldn’t, they just shouldn’t be in the same sentence, and the truth was that when Dean jerked off, he thought of anything but Sam (not that he jerked off often, these days, because for all he could come thinking of Angelina Jolie or whatever, he was always afraid that in the moment he let go, it would be Sam’s frightened begging in his ears), and fuck he really didn’t want to talk about this. “I don’t know,” he said.

Horst waited again, but Dean was damn good at waiting, and he pretty much always won that particular game.

“Dean,” said Horst finally, “I need you to help me understand this attraction of yours. I think you do know, and you need to realise that this is not your fault. I know you don’t want to have the feelings that you’re having, and I want to help you to deal with them, but I can’t do that if you’re not honest with me.”

You said you would be honest with me. Dean shook his head, willed Sam’s voice away. He thought about telling Horst about the dreams, but fuck, how could he? How could he come right out and say that he dreamed about raping his brother, that he woke up hard from it? All the non-judgemental in the world wasn’t enough to forgive that, and maybe Horst thought he needed to know in order to help Dean, but Dean was pretty sure there was no help for whatever was broken in him. He raised his head, met Horst’s eyes. “I don’t know,” he said again.

----
Two hundred and fourteen days
----
Dean knew the moment he woke up that Sam wasn’t asleep, and he felt the bottom drop out of his world. This was it. He’d been kidding himself, believing that this could work, that for all he was twisted beyond repair he could live with Sam, he could be Sam’s brother and keep the broken edges of himself locked away where they wouldn’t hurt anyone but him. But he remembered that last time he’d woken up after having the dream and Sam had been awake, too, God, how could he forget? He remembered holding the gun and thinking that this was the only way out, and he remembered Sam’s flesh sliding against his and how solid Sam’s throat felt under his hands.

He never should have come back. He’d been so fucking selfish, wanting, just wanting to have his life, even after all the times he’d sworn to himself that he would just give it up, just stay away so that Sam would be safe. Somehow he’d let himself forget that promise, and here he was, and it was all going to happen again, and Dean should have just put that bullet in his brain when he’d had a chance.

He heard Sam sit up, and he turned over, curling around his aching cock, no, no, no, I can’t do this again, not again. “Sam,” he said, and his voice was hoarse, “I don’t. Please, I don’t want this. I don’t want to hurt you.” Not again. Not ever again.

Sam shifted a little, and Dean considered his options, wondered whether Sam would just go out looking for it again if he left, wondering how he could stop him. Then Sam said I know, and Dean didn’t understand.

“What?” he asked, trying to connect his thoughts with Sam’s words.

“I know you don’t. I know... Dean, I was. When this happened before, I was, I. I didn’t ever mean to make it harder for you.”

Dean sat up now, looking at Sam, not understanding what the hell he was talking about but knowing that he wasn’t asking Dean to reenact Biloxi, and that was more than Dean had ever dared to hope. Sam’s eyes glittered in the dim light, but his face was in shadow, and Dean couldn’t tell what he was thinking.

“I don’t understand,” Dean said finally.

“It’s...” Sam shook his head, the points of light in his eyes moving and shifting. “Look, just... Just take a shower, OK? I know that’s what you need. We’ll talk when you’re done.”

Dean blinked, but he couldn’t think of anything to say, so he just stayed there, sitting in his damp sheets gaping at his brother.

“Dean?” Sam said. “It’s OK. Really. Take your shower. You can.... you can take care of it in there.”

And Dean suddenly couldn’t think of anything he wanted more than to try and wash away the dream, for all he’d tried it a million times before and it had never worked. But that wasn’t what Sam was saying. Sam was asking him, asking him to take care of it, and Dean knew it was too dark for Sam to see how turned on he was, but there was really no mistaking his meaning. The whole thing made Dean’s head spin with confusion and shame, but Sam wasn’t asking him for anything except for him to jerk off, just jerk off for Christ’s sake, and if that was what Sam wanted, Dean could do that, God, it felt like he’d just escaped from the death penalty.

As he reached the door to the bathroom, Sam called his name, and Dean turned, he’s changed his mind, he’s changed his mind, oh Christ. But Sam just hunched his shoulders, barely visible in the darkness, and said, “Turn the water up real loud, OK?”

And that, Dean could do.

----

Sam wasn’t even pretending to be asleep when Dean got out of the bathroom, and Dean felt tainted, like the shower had just added a thicker layer of grime to his skin. Sam had said it was OK, had told him to, but all the same it didn’t make it OK that he was jerking off because he’d dreamed about raping his brother. He sat on the edge of his bed, back to Sam, and tried to just breathe, wondered if it would be like this forever, if he would be like this forever.

“I’m sorry,” said Sam, and Dean felt himself tense. What the hell did that mean? He wondered for a sickening moment if Sam really had changed his mind, if he was going to try something, or if maybe he was about to tell Dean to leave (Dean should never have come back in the first place).

“What?” he asked, and God, his voice sounded so fucking broken.

“When I...” Dean heard Sam shift, sit up in bed. “Listen, Dean, before. When you had the dreams, and I made you... I made you...”

“Sam,” Dean said, God, he couldn’t do this, he couldn’t deal with it, not now. “Don’t you think you should be telling Horst this shit?”

“I did,” Sam said. “Now I’m... I want to tell you.”

“I don’t...” Dean hunched his shoulders, wished he had a fucking blanket or something that he could pull tighter around himself. “I told you, Sam, it’s done. No apologies. I don’t want to talk about it.”

Sam was quiet for a while, and Dean thought (hoped) he’d gone back to sleep, even though he knew, he knew he hadn’t. Finally, he said, “Not talking about it is what got us into this mess in the first place.”

Dean closed his eyes. He wanted to scream or throw things, wanted to say no, it was a fucking demon that got us in this mess, but he knew that wasn’t true, or at least, it wasn’t the whole truth. Sam was right, Sam was always fucking right, and if he was honest with himself, that was a relief, to come back to this, to have Sam be right again instead of just crazy. All the same, the result was not one he really wanted to deal with: Sam was right, and they ought to talk about it.

He lay back on the bed and closed his eyes. “So tell me,” he whispered.

Sam didn’t say anything for at least a minute, and Dean thought maybe he’d decided he didn’t want to talk after all, was torn between relief and worry. Neither was necessary, though – turned out Sam was just gearing up.

“It...” Sam said at last. “It’s difficult. I don’t really... remember too well, like – like everything was messed up in my head, you know?” Dean resisted the urge to say no fucking shit; instead, he kept his eyes closed and concentrated on not clenching his jaw so hard that he actually broke it. “But I wanted... Dean, I think I wanted, I felt like I wasn’t, wasn’t safe, you know? Like it could happen again any time. I think... I think I thought that if I could say when it happened, then at least I would.... I don’t know. Be able to control it or something.”

Dean realised he was gripping the sheets so hard he couldn’t feel his fingers. He remembered Sam, persistent, always making the first move, going out there and offering himself to strangers. “You thought I would do it to you again,” he said, feeling like his stomach had turned to lead, because that was fair enough, he had done it again, he fucking deserved that, and all the same it hurt, it fucking hurt.

“No,” said Sam, but not like he was rushing to deny it, like he was actually thinking about it, and somehow that made a little of the ache in Dean’s belly ease up. “Dean, I. I mean, I thought maybe that was what you wanted, but I never thought you would do it, that you would just take it. I knew you wouldn’t. I don’t think it was that rational, just. I was just so scared.”

This was fucking important, Dean knew that now. He hadn’t wanted to talk, but now that they were, he knew that what Sam was saying was maybe the most important thing anyone had said to him for months, maybe since before Biloxi, maybe even his entire life. He needed to say the right things, needed to think about what he was saying, because he thought Sam was finding a way back, and he wanted, he needed to be along for the ride.

“And now?” he said, almost afraid to say anything, because he was pretty sure a single wrong step would fuck this all to hell.

Sam was quiet again, and a car passed on the road outside. Then, he said, “Still scared,” and his voice was shaking, but he sounded like he was maybe smiling, and Dean opened his eyes sharply, turned his head. The room was still dark, but his eyes were accustomed, and Sam was, he fucking was, a rueful grin on his shadowy face.

“What about me?” Dean asked. Talking felt weird, like he hadn’t done it for days. “You don’t think I want... that any more?” I just woke up hard, you know what I was dreaming about, I know you know.

Sam’s smile faded, then he turned, swinging his legs over the side of the bed and looking Dean full in the face. “I have them too,” he said.

Dean blinked. He was pretty sure Sam wasn’t saying he dreamed about raping himself, so... “Have what?”

“Flashbacks,” said Sam. “It’s... The whole PTSD thing. I read... Horst gave me these leaflets.” He fumbled in the drawer of the nightstand and pulled out some papers, held them out. Dean just stared, and Sam sighed, laid them down by the lamp. “Dean,” he said, “it’s not your fault.”

Dean’s throat worked, but no sound came out. The hell it isn’t.

“Don’t give me that,” said Sam, like Dean had actually said it out loud. “It’s... Listen, it’s. It was never you, you get me? You, you told me, you said it yourself. You don’t want it. You never wanted it.”

Dean felt weird, fucked-up, disconnected; his words, his excuses and frantic rationalising, they were coming out of Sam’s mouth, and he just didn’t. Get it. Did Sam believe them? Did Dean believe them? Jesus, it was all so goddamn surreal, Dean wondered if maybe he was still dreaming.

“What about,” he said finally, and stopped. God, he was an asshole, he knew that, and saying crude shit out loud had never been the sort of thing that bothered him, but what about the fact that I get hard when I dream about fucking you, that was not something he was going to say to Sam, never to Sam.

“You should read the leaflets,” Sam said. “I can’t... Dean, I can’t explain it to you. It’s like... I get it, you know? I mean, I think I get it. But. My head’s just not...” He shook his head, like he was emphasising the point, like it would rattle or something. “I don’t know,” he said, finally, not looking at Dean any more.

“Jesus,” said Dean.

“Yeah,” said Sam.

They stayed like that for a while, Dean staring at the ceiling, watching the way the light and shadow moved as cars went past on the road, aware of Sam at the edge of his vision, still sitting on the edge of the bed, eyes on the floor. Dean still felt like there was grease crawling on his skin, but the panic in his belly had subsided; he didn’t really get it, but it was enough to know that somehow, somehow Sam had forgiven him, whether he deserved it or not, and that maybe Sam had started to forgive himself, too. This wasn’t OK, God, still so far from it, but Dean thought it was maybe the calmest he’d felt for a long while, which was weird, because he hadn’t really understood most of what Sam had said.

Finally, Sam lay back on his bed, staring at the ceiling too. “Do you think we’ll ever get out of this place?” he asked.

“What?” Dean was startled out of his thoughts; sleep was still a thousand goddamn miles away.

“I don’t know, man.” Sam sort of laughed. “It’s like... I don’t. I don’t even know what... What state we’re in. With.” He stopped, ran a hand over his face. “What state are we in?”

“South Dakota,” Dean said, and tried to sound as neutral as possible. I don’t know what state we’re in. They’d been there for weeks, months. Sam didn’t even know.

“Oh,” said Sam, and then, after a moment’s thought, “Bobby--”

“I haven’t seen him,” said Dean, and closed his eyes against the sound of taunts in his ears, a voice that wasn’t really a voice, and a bullet hole in the chest of a beautiful woman.

“Oh,” said Sam again. Dean waited, wondered; Sam wasn’t finished.

“So, we’ve been... here for so long,” Sam said, and Dean caught the hesitation, wondered if it was just the normal slowness that Sam’s speech was shot through with these days (but it’s getting better, it’s getting better) or if Sam actually didn’t even know the name of the town. “Longer, I think. I mean. Longer than anywhere since.” And that one wasn’t new, Sam always let his sentences trail off like that when it came to mentioning Jess and Stanford. “I just.” Sam rubbed his face again. “I don’t want this to be my life, you know? Our lives. This isn’t us.”

Dean thought about getting back on the road, just the two of them, music blasting, the roar of the Impala’s engine and a feeling of purpose, something pulling them on. It was all he could do not to bundle Sam into the car then and there and get the fuck out of this town that held some of the worst memories of his life (and Jesus, Dean had plenty to pick from). And then... that wasn’t it any more. Saving people was pointless, it didn’t mean anything if he couldn’t save Sam. And saving Sam meant therapy, for both of them, painful and boring and depressing as it might be; saving Sam meant this, and if that was true, then this was what their lives would be.

“You need help,” he said, and it sounded harsh, roughened edges, but he didn’t mean it that way.

“I don’t mean now,” said Sam. “I know... I’m not ready. But one day, Dean. Do you think one day?”

Dean chewed the inside of his lip. “When you’re ready Sam. We’ll go whenever you’re ready.”

Sam fell silent, turned his head to look at Dean; Dean kept his eyes on the ceiling, and after a moment, Sam sighed.

“When we’re ready,” he said.

----

It was after three when Sam started talking again. Dean had no idea how long they’d both been lying there in the darkness, but it felt like the night would never end. His sheets felt stiff and his skin rubbed raw, but it was nothing to what he felt when Sam began to speak.

“In my flashbacks,” said Sam, “it’s not a demon, it’s you.”

Dean froze, feeling all the spit in his mouth dry up instantaneously. GodnoSamno he thought, but he couldn’t speak, couldn’t even make a wordless noise.

“You’re always... smiling,” said Sam, and it was weird, it was like he didn’t even really know he was talking, like he’d switched off and just let it all spill out. And then he just talked, words falling over one another, sometimes coherent, sometimes not, and Dean, after his initial terror Dean gritted his teeth and listened, because that was what Sam needed from him (that was what they both needed, God, Dean didn’t want to know, but he needed to, he needed it), and it didn’t all make sense, even some parts that did didn’t really register in Dean’s brain, but when Sam was finished, Dean knew, he knew, he felt the fear and the shame and he’d felt them before, God, he knew this feeling. And he hated that Sam felt this way, he would do anything to take it away, but that wasn’t the only thing on his mind.

Sometime around five, Sam fell asleep, and Dean sat up, heart still pounding and can it really just be that simple? and reached for the leaflets where they lay on the nightstand.

He read them in the car, engine purring quietly, heater working properly thank God, because outside was colder than death. His hands still shook, though, as he thumbed through, and the things were smudged and torn, they must have been glossy once but too much reading had put paid to that. The print was small, but some words and phrases leapt out at Dean like they were flashing neon signs. Male rape and involuntary arousal. Flashbacks and experiencing the same emotions as during the original incident. And Dean stared, read the words over and over again, and Jesus Christ, is that it, is that it? And how, how could these worn-out scraps of paper tell him, how could they hold the key to everything that was twisted up and broken inside him? Could it really be that simple?

Dean didn’t know. But he needed to find out.

----

At ten a.m., Dean walked into Horst’s office and sat down on the couch. Horst smiled at him like he always did, the sympathetic asshole.

“Good morning, Dean,” he said. “How are you feeling?”

Dean took a deep breath. “I have these dreams,” he said.