With Spit and a Prayer

Thanks to HalfBloodPhoenix and Starflow for their kind reviews of chapter two :).

With Spit and a Prayer, Chapter Three

Summer was always a crowded time for hunters -- the heat and burgeoning life drawing things out of the dark -- and as June melted into July, Dean killed a banshee and two draugar, and Sam remembered Biloxi.

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Thirteen days
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Sam felt like he’d been afraid for ever. Somewhere in his mind, tangled up in all the suffocating layers of terror, there was the knowledge that it hadn’t always been like this, that once, not so long ago, he had been able to sleep through the night with his worst fear being vivid dreams of strangers dying. It almost would have made him laugh to think that he was nostalgic for those days, except that he couldn’t think straight, couldn’t grasp on to the fragments of rational thought that slipped past him, could only be afraid. And maybe, actually, he had been afraid for ever. Maybe this was his reality, and the bright glimpses of something else beyond were just illusions he created to keep himself sane.

Then he was awake, actually really awake, with his eyes open and his skin clammy, trembling under the sheets in a motel room in some town that he couldn’t even remember the name of, and Dean wasn’t there, and that simple fact was enough to make the terror of his dream come crashing back in full force, twisting in his stomach and searing under his skin, until he lurched off the bed and onto the floor and gagged, palms and kneees grinding into the gritty carpet, acid burning his throat as he vomitted up what felt like his entire digestive system.

When he was done, he collapsed onto his back, staring up at the shadows on the ceiling. The terror receded quickly, until it was nothing more than a vague memory, something he might almost imagine had never happened if it wasn’t for the cold sweat on his skin and the stinking pool of acid and half-digested slime next to him. He became aware of the shower running for the first time, although it must have been going on since before he woke up, otherwise Dean would have heard him and come to investigate. Because Dean wouldn’t leave him. He wouldn’t.

Sam closed his eyes and rubbed his fingers over the bridge of his nose, trying not to think about the headache that was already building up into a healthy throb. These nightmares were weird. OK, so nightmares were always weird with him, but this was a new kind of weird, and it was making him pretty nervous. As if he needed another thing to be nervous about – wait, maybe the nightmares were related to his daytime paranoia? That would make sense, he thought, trying to remember the first one he had had, and failing, because the days since the nightmares had started, since Dean had stopped being Dean, were all blurring into a long succession of driving and arguing and tense silences and a continual feeling of foreboding.

Wait, no, the nightmares had started when Dean had stopped sleeping, that was right, wasn’t it? Because at first, he had thought that Dean wasn’t sleeping because of the nightmares, because he wanted to be there to wake Sam up. Then had come the conversation in the parking lot of that bar in Oregon, and the new worry, the niggling fear that something had... broken in Dean’s mind. After that, Dean claimed to be sleeping more, and certainly Sam didn’t remember being woken up by him again, not really, although if he pushed hard enough he thought he could remember the impression of warm hands on his forehead and a voice that made him feel safe. But had that been before or after Oregon? Had it even happened at all?

Drowsiness and his headache were making it hard to think clearly. That was the thing that Sam really despised about his visions – the disorientation, the difficulty he had in organising his thoughts afterwards, the feeling of not being in control of his own mind, the one advantage that he had, the one place he was secure. These nightmares weren’t visions, though, and the headache they brought was of a different quality – all the same, the confusion was just as frustrating. He felt like there was something he should know, some way in which all the pieces fitted together, the nightmares, the paranoia, Dean’s bizarre assertion that he’d been raped, which thankfully he seemed to have given up on now. There was a connection, somewhere, and if he could just...

The shower shut off, and Sam thought he should have spent less time lying around daydreaming and more time cleaning up the mess he’d made of the carpet. He didn’t have a chance to struggle to his feet, though, before he heard the door open and a muttered curse, and then Dean was beside him, cradling his head and saying Sam, Sammy, you OK?, and Sam had the sudden urge to just lie there and pretend to be sick or something just so Dean wouldn’t leave him alone again, so Dean would keep touching him like he never did any more.

That wasn’t fair though, and Dean was oddly fragile these days and didn’t deserve to be taken advantage of, so Sam opened his eyes and tried to smile, gesturing at the cooling vomit beside him. “Guess you were right about those shrimp, huh?”

Dean just looked at him, his eyes dark with something that Sam couldn’t read in the dim light filtering through the curtains. Then he hugged Sam close for just a second, the moment so brief that Sam thought maybe he’d just imagined it. “Let’s get you back to bed,” he said.

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Sam fell asleep almost immediately, despite his mumbled protests about helping to clean up. Dean stared at the mess on the floor, and it seemed to him that it stared back accusingly. Should have been there to wake Sam up before it got that far, should have been doing your job, trying to undo the damage you caused. Shouldn’t have been jerking off in the shower.

The air felt cold on Dean’s damp skin. It was only the second time, only the second time he’d been forced to give in to the raging hard-on that he always woke up to when he had the dream, and he thanked everything he could think of for the the small mercy that it had only come a few times – if it had been persistent, like Sam’s dreams, he didn’t think he could have survived this long. As it was, he found his entire being shot through with a sense of helpless rage and self-disgust. The demon was gone, no way to track it, but Dean was still somehow not in control of his body, weak enough that the sense-memories of the demon’s emotions could invade him and hold him hostage until he couldn’t take it any more and gave it what it wanted. Before Biloxi, he used to jerk off at least once a day, sometimes twice if he hadn’t gotten any for a while. He had come three times in the last two weeks, and even thinking of those occasions was enough to make him wish he had never been born.

He shuddered, considering going back in the shower and trying to scrub his own skin off. He felt dirty, tainted, inside and out; it had always been that way, at least partially, but now was worse, because he had managed to drag his brother down with him into the filth. And what he was doing now – still letting Sam continue in his pretence that nothing had happened, because he had no idea how to break down that wall of denial and was crippled by the fear of what might happen if he did – that wasn’t making it better. It wasn’t for Sam’s sake, and Dean wondered, for all his constant awareness of his brother’s physical and mental state, whether he ever did anything for Sam’s sake at all.

Sam shifted in his sleep, opened his eyes lazily. “Dean,” he said.

Dean knelt beside the bed, carefully avoiding the vomit. “I’m here, Sammy. Go back to sleep.”

“I need you to be Dean,” muttered Sam. “I need you to be my brother.”

Dean swallowed, his hand hovering over Sam’s forehead. Sam looked straight at him, but his eyes were unfocussed, and he didn’t see. “OK,” Dean whispered. “I can do that.” For Sam’s sake.

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Sixteen days
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It was easier than Dean thought at first. The draugar were a simple job, of course, to get them back into the swing, just a quick salt and burn and avoid getting clocked by the crazy dead people that weren’t ghosts and weren’t zombies, and as the flames went up Dean felt almost normal for the first time in too long, almost like he could take the whole thing and lock it away behind an unmarked door in his mind and never go back there. Sam didn’t remember, didn’t want to remember, and was that really such a bad thing?

And then, of course, there was the banshee, and not-sleeping and not-eating and muscles atrophied from too many hours in the car and too few on the hunt suddenly became an issue when Dean reacted too slowly and Sam collapsed to the ground, clutching his head at the creature’s shrieks. It wasn’t much, just a moment’s misstep, and it wouldn’t have mattered before, Dean would have dispatched the banshee and picked up Sam and they would have moved on, like they always did. Things were different now, though, because moving on required dealing, and neither of them were dealing, not really. That was plain enough when Dean knelt between Sam’s sprawled legs and grabbed his arms at the elbows, trying to bring him round, and Sam’s eyes suddenly opened so wide that his face looked stretched and alien, and he began to struggle and said please, Dean, don’t.

Dean jumped back like he had been burned, but Sam wasn’t looking at him, was thrashing as if he was still pinned, staring up at something above him that Dean couldn’t see, gasping and sobbing, and then he made a noise that was sickeningly familiar, and closed his eyes, tears leaking from the corners, and Dean didn’t know what to do.

“Sam,” he said, reaching out but afraid to touch. “Sam, Jesus, snap out of it.”

Sam made a strangled sound in his throat and turned his head away. Dean knew what was coming next – he remembered every freakin detail – and when Sam’s hands reached up as if to push something away and he started to make noises like he couldn’t breathe, it was all Dean could do not to take off, to put as much space between himself and this as he could. Instead, he grabbed Sam by the shoulders, because maybe he couldn’t change what had happened, but he could damn well stop Sam (both of them) from having to go through it again.

“Son of a bitch, Sam, just freakin stop it!”

Sam just lay there, choking and pushing feebly against Dean, and Dean could see he was losing it, losing the battle. At that moment, he was assaulted with the memory of how it felt to have Sam under him, unconscious and not breathing, his body jerking with the rhythm of Dean’s movements; rage and fear tangled up into each other and rose into his throat, and he was shaking Sam violently and yelling at him, not even words, just incoherent noises, because Sam Sammy don’t do this again I can’t do this again.

Sam’s head cracked against the floorboards and the sound penetrated somehow through the twisted muddle of memories and dreams and reality in Dean’s mind and he stopped, pulling away, backing away, just like then, just like Biloxi, except now they were fully clothed and half a country away and they had never really escaped. He dropped to the ground (just like Biloxi) and waited.

Sam didn’t move. Dean just stared at the floor, pressing his fingernails into his palms and wondering, wondering.

“Dean?” Sam asked finally, still lying on the floor. His eyes were open, staring at the ceiling. Dean swallowed.

“It wasn’t me, Sam. It wasn’t me.” It wasn’t me it wasn’t me it was me it’s my fault.

“You saw it,” Sam said, and Dean remembered Sam’s reaction back in Biloxi, the terrified scrambling and the wide eyes, and wondered why it was different this time. “You were there. In your head.”

There was no answer to that that Dean was prepared to give. Lying was less than Sam deserved, telling the truth was unthinkable. Dean didn’t say anything.

“It’s been two weeks,” Sam said softly. “I’ve been having... nightmares.”

“Sam...” Dean started, but Sam cut him off, sitting up slowly, his face turned away from Dean.

“Please. I can’t. I just. Can we just go home?”

It was strange, the way he said it. Neither of them ever referred to the motel rooms of their transient existence that way, home. How could they go to a place that didn’t exist?

“Dean?” said Sam again. “I just want to go home.”

Dean heaved a breath. He felt like he was drowning. “Yeah, Sammy. Let’s get you home.”

Outside, heat lightning lit up the sky. There was a storm on its way.