With Spit and a Prayer

Many, many thanks to atana_blackfox and Starflow for their kind words. Starflow, I'm really glad this fictional angst could alleviate your real-life version ;).
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With Spit and a Prayer, Chapter Five
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Twenty-four days
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It wasn’t the first time Sam had suffered from insomnia – Jesus, it wasn’t even the second, or the tenth – but it didn’t make it any easier to deal with. It was easy to forget the way it made him feel sometimes, when he’d gone for a while without lying awake counting the ticks of the clock and listening to Dean breathe evenly in the next bed, he could almost dismiss it as simply a matter of being kind of tired and having too much time on his hands, the way he knew most people who never had to deal with it did. Now, though, he remembered the crushing weight of exhaustion that seemed to make it impossible to hold his head up properly, the way everything looked slightly blurred around the edges, the feeling like he wasn’t really ever quite present. He’d given up trying to decide whether the headache that never seemed to stop was a result of the insomnia or just the same one he’d had for almost a month now, and ditto with the confusion. Intellectually, he knew there was a time when he’d been able to think straight, or at least more straight, and it hadn’t been that long ago, either, but he could barely remember what that was like now, and mostly he didn’t have the energy to even try.

Dean sighed and muttered something, turning over, and Sam lay still, staring at the damp stains marching across the ceiling and waiting. There was no more noise from the other bed though, and Sam was torn between relief and envy. He knew Dean hadn’t been sleeping too well either, knew that he woke up wide-eyed and sweaty at least a few times a week, but at this point, Sam would almost trade nightmares for not sleeping at all. Almost.

The clock beside him made a soft sound as the numbers flipped over to four a.m. Sam wondered if they were going to leave this motel room, this town, any time soon. They’d been there over a week, since the banshee, and Sam felt he knew every inch of the ceiling, every detail of the cracks in the plaster of the walls and the grime between the tiles in the bathroom, like he’d lived there all his life. All the same, the idea of moving ignited an obscure dread in the pit of his stomach. He hadn’t left the room since the incident at the gas station, and he was beginning to forget what it felt like to be outside at all, and actually, he was pretty OK with that, didn’t really see the need to challenge the status quo.

Except for Dean. Maybe Sam wasn’t thinking very clearly, and maybe he was having some trouble sleeping, but he wasn’t out of it enough not to realise that there was something wrong with Dean, and he knew, too, that he wasn’t helping matters. He was pretty sure that all Dean wanted to do was forget the whole thing had happened and get out on the road, back to normal (or what passed for normal for them, anyway). What Dean really didn’t need was to have to deal with Sam’s paranoia and be stuck in this crappy motel room for any more time. It was bad enough that Sam sometimes thought he could feel the disgust radiating from Dean, like it was actually a physical entity; lately, it seemed like it was all Sam could do just to not fall apart, and Dean was left holding the baby again.

OK, well, there was something Sam could do about that. He was tired of all this crap, tired of letting his life roll over him like a snow plough, tired of the way he kept allowing himself to drag Dean down too. In fact, he was just tired, period. But lying in bed staring at the ceiling wasn’t helping any, so he got up, heading for the bathroom and the aspirin they always kept under the mirror: the first thing that he was going to take control of was this bitch of a headache.

Except there was no aspirin left. Fuck. He should have remembered he’d taken the last couple the day before, he should have asked Dean to get some on one of his trips out that always lasted long enough to make Sam’s palms sweat with fear, and he’d thought about it too, but he’d decided the headache was a small price to pay if it would stop Dean from going out for a little longer. That, of course, was then, and this was now, and the damn thing was just getting worse, like it always did in the small hours when his thoughts circled each other like vultures and never quite made as much sense as they ought to. He closed his eyes, splashing a little cold water on his face and thinking about leaving the room, trying to imagine getting in the Impala and driving away with Dean to some other town that would be just like this one, another motel room with its own water stains and torn-up carpet and grimy windows – it wouldn’t be like moving at all, not really, not really, right? He could handle it, he could handle his life, right? He had to, because the alternative was to stay like this forever, and that was no alternative at all.

Sam slouched back over to his bed and sat down. He briefly considered turning on the laptop or the TV, but he didn’t feel like looking for a hunt (because if he found one that would force the issue, would mean that he had to leave the room whether he wanted to or not) and lately the obnoxious commercials they showed on every channel made him want to smash the TV screen with his bare hands. Anyway, it might wake Dean up, and Sam wasn’t ready for another round of concerned glances and strained silences just yet. Instead, he lay back on top of the covers and closed his eyes, preferring the view of the inside of his eyelids to more of the damn ceiling.

A moment later, he eyes flicked open again, because something was pressing down on his body, and damn, it was Dean. Jesus.

“Dean, that’s not fucking funny, get off me, you freak,” Sam said, and struggled to push Dean off, but his arms were pinned by the elbows and Dean’s full weight was resting on his legs, so he couldn’t move. He started to feel panic rising in his throat, because Dean wasn’t moving, and he had to know this wasn’t appropriate, that it wasn’t a prank that ever ought to be played. Sam tried to say get off, get off, Dean, don’t, but his throat was dry and he couldn’t make his tongue form the words.

Then Dean started throwing punches, and it was like Sam was in a dream, his head getting fuzzier and fuzzier and aching and throbbing until he could barely see Dean’s face above him, and it was all he could do just to stay conscious. When Dean reached for his fly, though, Sam felt the panic that had settled back to a dull background roar spike once more, and he struggled again, whispering please, Dean, don’t.

But Dean just grinned down at him, grinned like the whole thing was fucking hilarious, and said it’s OK, Sam, this is for your own good. Don’t worry, I won’t let anything bad happen to you.

Sam knew what was coming next, and that was weird, he supposed, it was weird that this was happening exactly the same way, but he really didn’t have the mental agility to analyse everything that was off about the situation when he could feel his brother entering his body for the second time. The pain was fucking awful, but the worst thing was the expression of ecstacy on Dean’s face as he said Jesus, Sammy, you’re so good, I’ve wanted this for so long. And the way his face was flushed with pleasure, the way he bit his lip and groaned, Sam couldn’t help but believe him.

Then Sam couldn’t breathe, but to his surprise he found that it wasn’t Dean’s hands crushing his windpipe, because Dean wasn’t there any more, Dean had vanished from on top of him like he had never been there in the first place. In fact, Dean was lying in the next bed, sleeping, fucking sleeping like nothing had happened. Sam rolled away from him sharply, rolled off the bed and dropped onto the floor, banging his elbow painfully and coming up in a defensive crouch. Except something was strange, something wasn’t quite right, and it took Sam a long moment of holding his breath and listening to see if Dean was going to move before he realised that he was still wearing his sweatpants.

OK, weird. Sam ran in a half-crouch across to the bathroom and locked the door behind him, taking a moment to breathe, counting his breaths, one, two, three, calm down, calm down. He flipped on the light, still listening for any movement from the next room and hearing none. Then he caught sight of his face in the bathroom mirror and paused. His face was clean, a few creases from the pillow, but no bruises, no blood. He stepped closer, raising his fingers to his cheek and watching his reflection do the same. Dean had been punching him, hadn’t he? Sam had felt it, it had hurt.

It didn’t hurt now, though.

Sam watched his eyes in the mirror, trying to work out if he looked insane. It was definitely one explanation, but in the world he inhabited, mysterious vanishing bruises and events not adding up could quite easily be caused by something other than psychosis, and Sam was not about to rule anything out. He needed to get a grip on what was going on somehow, but really he felt like he hadn’t had a grip on anything for weeks now, and every time he tried to go through it logically in his mind, all he could hear was Dean’s voice saying I’ve wanted this for so long (demons lie). God, he was just so tired.

The first-aid kit was under the sink, and Sam reached for it, because his headache was throbbing like a fucking express train, and there had to be some aspirin, there had to be, he just couldn’t take this any more. He grabbed the first bottle of pills that came into his hand and squinted to read the bottle in the sharp fluorescent light (because the pain had gone, but his vision was still kind of blurry, and it wasn’t because he had tears in his eyes, it wasn’t). It was the pills they used to take the edge off when one of them was banged up bad, and Sam remembered the peaceful, sleepy feeling they engendered, imagined just going to sleep and pretending the world didn’t exist, and he dropped a couple into his shaking palm and swallowed them dry.

He looked at himself in the mirror again. He looked like crap, but there were still no bruises.

Swallowing down his fear, Sam unlocked the bathroom door and went back to bed.

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Twenty-Seven Days
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Dean shifted from one foot to the other and wiped the sweat off the back of his neck with his free hand. The day had barely begun, but it was going to be another hot one, hotter than hell, Dean thought, and then wished he hadn’t. It seemed like the short night had done almost nothing to freshen the air that hung in stultifying columns of heat-haze over the asphalt, and Dean knew that when he got back to the motel room it would be like stepping into a sauna, but he was anxious to be back nonetheless. Their credit cards were almost maxed out, and they needed to move on to a new town, or at least a new motel, today if possible. Dean almost laughed at how simple it sounded: move on. Like all you needed was to turn your back and go.

The post office finally opened its doors, and Dean slipped inside, grateful for the cool currents of air-conditioned breeze against his skin. The new credit cards were waiting in the post-office box he’d rented almost two weeks ago, before the banshee hunt, and that, at least, was simple as it ever was; it was just everything else that was utterly fucked up.

Maybe Sam would be OK with it, though. He had been seeming more OK with Dean going out to run errands for the last couple of days. Yeah, right, it was really saying something that Dean could label Sam’s recent behaviour more OK. If it wasn’t too obvious that Sam was barely speaking to Dean any more, that was mainly because Sam seemed to hardly ever be awake, and while at first Dean had just been glad of an end to the insomnia and the nightmares, after three days of sitting watching Sam sleep (and how the hell could he sleep under so many blankets when Dean felt like he was cooking from the inside out in just jeans and a t-shirt?) he was beginning to get worried. Well, OK, he had been worried pretty much non-stop for the last month, but now he was beginning to get worried about something else. But OK, so the whole sleeping all the time thing was probably not a good sign, but it might make it easier for Dean to get the two of them away from the motel room they’d been living in for the past two weeks and out onto the road again. Hell, maybe it would even be good for Sam to move on.

And there was that phrase again, move on, and behind it was the ugly truth that Dean was trying to ignore, that actually his desire to leave town had very little to do with credit cards, maxed out or not, and certainly nothing to do with whether it would be good for Sam. Before the banshee hunt, they hadn’t stayed in one place for more than two days at a time since Biloxi, and Dean was getting to the point were every time he felt a breath of breeze on his neck (which wasn’t too often, given the weather and the fact that he barely ever left the motel room) he tensed, waiting to feel that presence inside him again. It was ridiculous really, because there was no reason to believe the demon would find them more difficult to track if they were moving, and really no reason either to believe it wanted back inside him at all (after all, it had pretty much fucked everything up about as much as it possibly could already), but all the same, Dean felt like it was hovering just behind him, just waiting for the time when he dropped his guard.

He was never dropping his guard again. Never.

It didn’t help that he was reminded what the damn thing was like almost every night (except in his dreams, it was different, it wasn’t like the demon was inside him, it was like he was the demon, but he tried not to think about that). He’d hoped the dreams might go away eventually, but it just seemed like they were getting worse. Something had to break soon, and Dean was afraid it was going to be him.

When he got back to the motel room, Sam was still sleeping, barely visible under the pile of blankets. Dean had packed their bags earlier; the only thing that was left to do now was persuade Sam. He stood over his brother, reaching down automatically to touch him on the shoulder, then stopped himself (just in time). “Sam,” he muttered. Yeah, Dean, that’s really gonna wake him up. “Sam,” he said, louder this time, but Sam didn’t even stir, even his bangs were immobile, stuck to his forehead with sweat. Dean remembered a time when Sam used to look peaceful when he was asleep; now, he just looked tired.

“Sam,” Dean said, raising his voice a notch higher, “come on, wake up. We gotta go.”

Sam ignored him, and Dean was suddenly afraid, because he wasn’t totally sure he could see Sam’s chest rising and falling underneath all those blankets, and what if, what if, and so he reached out, steeling himself, and grabbed Sam’s arm, shaking him roughly. “Sam, for Christ’s sake.”

Sam stirred thank God thank God, and then his eyes snapped open and in that instant Dean knew he’d made a horrible mistake, because Sam was terrified, and Dean was standing over him and oh Jesus shouldn’t have touched him shouldn’t have and then Sam scrambled back and rolled off the bed, tangled up in the blankets, and Dean backed off, raising his hands and saying it’s OK Sam it’s just me it’s Dean I was just trying to wake you up.

Sam manged to make it to the corner of the room, trailing blankets and scrabbling with ragged fingernails, and then he stopped, panting, his eyes wide and staring. “Dean?” he said.

“Yeah, kiddo,” Dean replied, still holding his hands palms outwards. “It’s me.”

Sam drew two deep breaths and then dropped his eyes. “You surprised me,” he said.

“I noticed.”

Sam didn’t reply, his chest still heaving. Dean lowered his hands slowly. “We’ve got to leave, Sam,” he said, and in the back of his mind a voice said you’re leaving for you, not for him.

“I...” Sam looked at his hands, playing with a fraying thread on the blanket, “where are we going?”

“Somewhere safe,” Dean said. What’s that saying about closing the stable door after the horse has bolted?

Sam bit his lip until the blood welled up, and Dean watched it fall, drop by drop, onto the blanket.

Something had to break soon, and Dean was afraid it was going to be him.