With Spit and a Prayer
folder
Supernatural › General
Rating:
Adult ++
Chapters:
24
Views:
6,213
Reviews:
83
Recommended:
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Currently Reading:
0
Category:
Supernatural › General
Rating:
Adult ++
Chapters:
24
Views:
6,213
Reviews:
83
Recommended:
0
Currently Reading:
0
Disclaimer:
I do not own Supernatural, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.
Chapter Seven
Many thanks and hugs to Angel Jade, Emilia and Starflow for their generous reviews. Guys, you're so kind, and I'm glad you like the angst, because, well, it just keeps on coming :/.
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With Spit and a Prayer, Chapter Seven
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Thirty-six Days
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Please, Dean, don’t.
Dean smiled down at Sam, who was still struggling beneath him. He knew Sam wouldn’t be able to escape—he never could—but his desperation sent an extra thrill of excitement through his belly and he paused to savour it for a moment, before thrusting forward and feeling fireworks ignite behind his eyes. Jesus, but Sam was tight, and it felt so good, and the pain that twisted across Sam’s face was just the icing on the cake. Every move he made, every grunt of pain or whimper of protest, just increased Dean’s pleasure, and it only got better when he reached out to squeeze Sam’s throat beneath his hands, until it built to a crescendo of sensuality that was so powerful he almost couldn’t breathe.
He couldn’t breathe.
He couldn’t breathe.
Dean woke up sharply with panic in his chest and the breath frozen in his throat, and Jesus Christ, the dreams were so fucking vivid, he was so hard it hurt, and Sam, God, Sam was sleeping in the next bed just a couple of feet away, and Dean had been dreaming oh God he had been dreaming and how could he dream of that, how could he dream of hurting Sam, the one person he was sworn to protect, how could he dream of it and like it?
Dean scrambled out of the bed and almost ran into the bathroom, his legs trembling and his sweatpants rubbing painfuly against his erection. He put the shower on full, the water as cold as it would go, and gagged over the toilet but nothing would come up, the burger he had eaten earlier just sitting like a lump of wood in his stomach, Jesus, it hurt, everything hurt. He didn’t even bother to take off his clothes, just crawled into the shower with them on, because he didn’t want to see himself naked in the mirror, didn’t want to see the evidence of what he had become.
The water stung like needles under his skin, but Dean turned his face to it, letting it course over him, biting, burning, but not cleansing, because it seemed like nothing could do that anymore. He kept his eyes wide open even though it hurt like hell, because he was terrified that if he closed them he would see his brother’s face distorted and pained (and maybe that was bad enough, but what was really terrifying Dean was that he would like it). Sinking to the floor of the shower stall and letting the water pour over the top of his head, he drew his knees up to his chest and dug his nails into the palms of his hands, because how, how did he get this far and how the hell was he going to get back?
It was four days since he’d found Sam lying on the floor barely breathing. Dean had said—he’d said—that they needed to stop, that they needed to do something, that they would figure it out. And yet, here he was, sitting on the floor of the shower with a raging hard-on and he hadn’t figured out a thing, not a fucking thing. And the only good thing that he could think of right now was that at least Sam seemed a little better, at least he’d been able to push past his fear of breaking Sammy just a little, and that seemed to be helping, it seemed to be making things easier for Sam, and God all he wanted to do was to make things easier for Sam, he didn’t want to hurt him, he didn’t.
He didn’t want to hurt Sam. But there was no denying that he did, almost every night, in his dreams.
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Thirty-Seven Days
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When Dean woke up for the second time, Sam was gone.
He didn’t realise at first, because the untidy pile of blankets on the other bed was bulky and rumpled enough that it was hard to tell if there was actually someone sleeping in them or not. It was only after he’d taken a shower (his second in just a few hours, but he still felt tainted by the dream he’d had the previous night) and started thinking about getting coffee that he realised the bundle hadn’t moved.
At all.
Of course, the idea that Sam had gone out on his own didn’t even occur to Dean; what did occur was the memory of Sam lying huddled on the coarse, stained carpet, barely breathing, and Dean suddenly felt like he was barely breathing himself as he flung back the covers. There was no body there, though, no Sam, and at first Dean thought thank God, thank God, and then he thought where the hell is Sam?
There was time for Dean to check the parking lot, check the car, check the weapons oh Jesus and start to panic in earnest before Sam walked through the door of the room like nothing had happened and said I found us a job. Dean stared and stared, but Sam didn’t look at him, just opened his laptop and sat down, like he’d forgotten the entire last month.
“Looks like a headless horseman, about two hours away,” Sam said, scrolling through a page of newspaper articles. “Probably a pretty simple job, but it’ll be easier once we get there and can check out somelocal history.”
“Sam...” Dean didn’t know what to say. Yesterday, Sam had seemed a little better, it was true, but only a little, and Dean had been preparing for a long road back (but he’d been hopeful, hopeful that they’d started on that road). Now, it seemed like they’d skipped a few hundred miles or something. Something had happened, but Dean had no idea what it was.
Sam didn’t look up from his screen. “What?”
Dean blinked. It was good, though, right? Sam was ready to hunt again, Sam was ready to move on. “Nothing,” he said. “I’ll pack my stuff.”
----
Dean barely saw Sam after they arrived in the little burg of Jonestown – he hit the library pretty much the moment he could, shrugging off Dean’s offer of help, and Dean figured it was just the result of too long spent away from the books, and couldn’t help but feel a twinge of relief; OK, Sam was still not looking at him, but Dean had got pretty used to that by now, and Rome wasn’t built in a day, right? The memory of the dream had faded somewhat, and it seemed doable, they were only dreams after all, and if Sam could get over what had happened, then so could Dean, so would Dean. Even the heat seemed to have lifted a little, and Dean felt like he could breathe for the first time in years as he drove around checking out the sites where the horseman had been sighted. The town was nothing special: apple pie, Little League, joggers and guys mowing their lawns. It was exactly the kind of place Dean would expect to find trouble.
In the end, the horseman wasn’t nearly as much trouble as he might have been, though, especially after so long out of the saddle (so to speak, because if there was one thing hunting a Headless Horseman was good for, it was making puns). Dean picked Sam up from the library just before sundown, and Sam had what they needed (and to be honest, Dean was kind of surprised it had taken him so long, the information he’d got was pretty straightforward and should have been easy to find, but he guessed Sam’s research skills were maybe a little rusty too), and everything was going to plan. They found the site, and Sam was hunting for the grave marker in the growing dusk when Dean spotted it and touched him on the arm.
“Over there,” he said.
Sam pulled away from him. “Hands of, dude, I’m not your girlfriend,” he muttered, slouching in the direction Dean had pointed, and Dean frowned, but Sam had been in a foul mood all day, and yeah, probably he was having a little trouble adjusting to normal life again (or whatever passed for normal for a Winchester, anyway) and that was fair enough, right? At any rate, he started digging, and Dean figured it was time to join him.
In the end, Sam burned the bones while Dean distracted the spirit. At the last minute, though, the guy seemed to realise what was going on and wheeled his horse in the direction of Sam, a hoof flying out and catching him in the ribs just before both horse and rider dissolved into nothing. Sam fell back, and Dean felt a shock of fear in his stomach, even though he knew, he knew that it had only been a tap, nothing to worry about. He raced forward, reaching for Sam to help him up, to check he was OK, and Sam slapped him away, hard, and struggled to his feet, taking a step back.
“I told you not to touch me,” he spat, and Dean froze, hands still outstretched like a moron, but he couldn’t move, he could only stare. Sam shrugged his shoulders deeper into the winter jacket he was wearing and stalked off without a word, and Dean was left standing, trying to work out what had just happened, because yesterday Sam had been OK with Dean touching him, and it’d been hard, yeah, because Dean was still terrified every time he reached out, but it got easier every time, and it had been getting better, and now Dean didn’t know any more, he just didn’t know.
But things didn’t get better all at once, right? There were bound to be hitches along the way (except that it hadn’t been Sam who had instituted the ‘no touching’ rule in the first place), it wasn’t just a case of getting over it and moving on. So this, this was nothing more than a glitch, not even that much, just Sam being irritable, right? Right. Right.
Dean trailed after Sam and felt his fingers burning where Sam had pushed them away.
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Forty days
----
Sam woke up to the sound of the loudspeakers above him announcing closing time in fifteen minutes. He shuddered, pulling his coat tighter around himself and trying to ease the crick in his neck that came from sleeping curled up in the bathroom stall. His entire body ached, and he felt cold and numb, longing for space to stretch out his cramped legs.
Except finding space meant going outside, and outside was a library and a world full of people who stared at him like they knew, like they knew that even his own
But Sam wasn’t thinking about that, he wasn’t (except soon he was going to have to, because the library was closing and he would have to go back to the motel room and Dean would be there, and Sam didn’t know if he could stand it, not any more, God, everything was so screwed up in his head). Someone came into the bathroom, the door banging, and Sam jerked, flinching before he could stop himself, which was stupid, laughable, because who would find him here, in the bathroom of the public library in some crappy little town where even the day’s newspapers seemed to be out of date (except that Dean already knew where he was, Dean could find him any time if he wanted to, and what if he wanted to, what if he wanted oh God
Sam had to get out. He had to get out of the goddamn bathroom stall, out of the library, somewhere where he could breathe, but there was someone out there and he couldn’t, he couldn’t, so he waited with his heart in his throat until he heard whoever it was leave. Then he grabbed his bag and hesitated, hand on the lock (because he was safe with it locked, right? except that he wasn’t safe anywhere any more), before finally pushing the door open.
No-one noticed him as he walked through the library, head down, shoulders hunched, going as fast as he could without attracting attention from the few patrons who were still there at this hour. No-one ever noticed, so why did he always feel like everyone was looking at him? Why was he so worried about the people out here, when the real problem was
Some guy called after him as he banged out of the door, but Sam wasn’t listening, Sam wasn’t thinking, he was just moving, trying as hard as he could to find a space where he didn’t feel like pieces of him were being torn away with every breath, where the light didn’t hurt his eyes and the air didn’t scratch his throat and then someone was grabbing his arm by the elbow, saying you dropped this, but Sam didn’t even look, because
And then he was falling, he’d been running, he thought he’d been running but he was falling and he could still feel the fingers on his arm even though there was nothing there, no-one there, he was somewhere in an empty lot and lying on the ground like he’d tripped or something (only he didn’t remember tripping), and there was Dean, there was Dean and this time there was no demon in him, Sam knew as sure as he knew his own name, it was just Dean, holding him down, smiling like it was a big fucking joke and and Sam didn’t think
Dark. It was dark and Sam was still lying on the ground and Dean was gone (Dean had never been there). The gravel was sharp beneath his palms and he knew that he should get up, but he was so fucking tired, sleeping under bushes and in the corners of empty warehouses for four days had left him wrung-out and useless (and wasn’t that a joke, because it was like he was homeless except that he spent every night in a perfectly good motel room with a perfectly good bed and the only problem was his
Sam scrambled to his feet, brushing the gravel out of his hair. His stuff was scattered across the lot, and he didn’t remember how that had happened, but then he was having trouble remembering a lot of stuff these days (except the things he didn’t want to remember, he had no trouble with them). He had to get back. Dean would be worried, and if he was worried he would come out looking for Sam and he would want to talk to him, to make sure he was OK. Sam wasn’t sure he could handle that. Right now, he wasn’t sure he could handle anything, he just wanted everything to just stop.
But it wouldn’t stop. Nothing stopped, it just kept hurtling on faster and faster, and the longer it went on, the more Sam became convinced that the final destination was a brick wall, but he was helpless to do anything about it. Something inside him was broken, he was pretty sure of that, but he had no idea what it was or how to fix it, and the only person who might have known had turned out not to be the person Sam thought he was at all.
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With Spit and a Prayer, Chapter Seven
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Thirty-six Days
----
Please, Dean, don’t.
Dean smiled down at Sam, who was still struggling beneath him. He knew Sam wouldn’t be able to escape—he never could—but his desperation sent an extra thrill of excitement through his belly and he paused to savour it for a moment, before thrusting forward and feeling fireworks ignite behind his eyes. Jesus, but Sam was tight, and it felt so good, and the pain that twisted across Sam’s face was just the icing on the cake. Every move he made, every grunt of pain or whimper of protest, just increased Dean’s pleasure, and it only got better when he reached out to squeeze Sam’s throat beneath his hands, until it built to a crescendo of sensuality that was so powerful he almost couldn’t breathe.
He couldn’t breathe.
He couldn’t breathe.
Dean woke up sharply with panic in his chest and the breath frozen in his throat, and Jesus Christ, the dreams were so fucking vivid, he was so hard it hurt, and Sam, God, Sam was sleeping in the next bed just a couple of feet away, and Dean had been dreaming oh God he had been dreaming and how could he dream of that, how could he dream of hurting Sam, the one person he was sworn to protect, how could he dream of it and like it?
Dean scrambled out of the bed and almost ran into the bathroom, his legs trembling and his sweatpants rubbing painfuly against his erection. He put the shower on full, the water as cold as it would go, and gagged over the toilet but nothing would come up, the burger he had eaten earlier just sitting like a lump of wood in his stomach, Jesus, it hurt, everything hurt. He didn’t even bother to take off his clothes, just crawled into the shower with them on, because he didn’t want to see himself naked in the mirror, didn’t want to see the evidence of what he had become.
The water stung like needles under his skin, but Dean turned his face to it, letting it course over him, biting, burning, but not cleansing, because it seemed like nothing could do that anymore. He kept his eyes wide open even though it hurt like hell, because he was terrified that if he closed them he would see his brother’s face distorted and pained (and maybe that was bad enough, but what was really terrifying Dean was that he would like it). Sinking to the floor of the shower stall and letting the water pour over the top of his head, he drew his knees up to his chest and dug his nails into the palms of his hands, because how, how did he get this far and how the hell was he going to get back?
It was four days since he’d found Sam lying on the floor barely breathing. Dean had said—he’d said—that they needed to stop, that they needed to do something, that they would figure it out. And yet, here he was, sitting on the floor of the shower with a raging hard-on and he hadn’t figured out a thing, not a fucking thing. And the only good thing that he could think of right now was that at least Sam seemed a little better, at least he’d been able to push past his fear of breaking Sammy just a little, and that seemed to be helping, it seemed to be making things easier for Sam, and God all he wanted to do was to make things easier for Sam, he didn’t want to hurt him, he didn’t.
He didn’t want to hurt Sam. But there was no denying that he did, almost every night, in his dreams.
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Thirty-Seven Days
----
When Dean woke up for the second time, Sam was gone.
He didn’t realise at first, because the untidy pile of blankets on the other bed was bulky and rumpled enough that it was hard to tell if there was actually someone sleeping in them or not. It was only after he’d taken a shower (his second in just a few hours, but he still felt tainted by the dream he’d had the previous night) and started thinking about getting coffee that he realised the bundle hadn’t moved.
At all.
Of course, the idea that Sam had gone out on his own didn’t even occur to Dean; what did occur was the memory of Sam lying huddled on the coarse, stained carpet, barely breathing, and Dean suddenly felt like he was barely breathing himself as he flung back the covers. There was no body there, though, no Sam, and at first Dean thought thank God, thank God, and then he thought where the hell is Sam?
There was time for Dean to check the parking lot, check the car, check the weapons oh Jesus and start to panic in earnest before Sam walked through the door of the room like nothing had happened and said I found us a job. Dean stared and stared, but Sam didn’t look at him, just opened his laptop and sat down, like he’d forgotten the entire last month.
“Looks like a headless horseman, about two hours away,” Sam said, scrolling through a page of newspaper articles. “Probably a pretty simple job, but it’ll be easier once we get there and can check out somelocal history.”
“Sam...” Dean didn’t know what to say. Yesterday, Sam had seemed a little better, it was true, but only a little, and Dean had been preparing for a long road back (but he’d been hopeful, hopeful that they’d started on that road). Now, it seemed like they’d skipped a few hundred miles or something. Something had happened, but Dean had no idea what it was.
Sam didn’t look up from his screen. “What?”
Dean blinked. It was good, though, right? Sam was ready to hunt again, Sam was ready to move on. “Nothing,” he said. “I’ll pack my stuff.”
----
Dean barely saw Sam after they arrived in the little burg of Jonestown – he hit the library pretty much the moment he could, shrugging off Dean’s offer of help, and Dean figured it was just the result of too long spent away from the books, and couldn’t help but feel a twinge of relief; OK, Sam was still not looking at him, but Dean had got pretty used to that by now, and Rome wasn’t built in a day, right? The memory of the dream had faded somewhat, and it seemed doable, they were only dreams after all, and if Sam could get over what had happened, then so could Dean, so would Dean. Even the heat seemed to have lifted a little, and Dean felt like he could breathe for the first time in years as he drove around checking out the sites where the horseman had been sighted. The town was nothing special: apple pie, Little League, joggers and guys mowing their lawns. It was exactly the kind of place Dean would expect to find trouble.
In the end, the horseman wasn’t nearly as much trouble as he might have been, though, especially after so long out of the saddle (so to speak, because if there was one thing hunting a Headless Horseman was good for, it was making puns). Dean picked Sam up from the library just before sundown, and Sam had what they needed (and to be honest, Dean was kind of surprised it had taken him so long, the information he’d got was pretty straightforward and should have been easy to find, but he guessed Sam’s research skills were maybe a little rusty too), and everything was going to plan. They found the site, and Sam was hunting for the grave marker in the growing dusk when Dean spotted it and touched him on the arm.
“Over there,” he said.
Sam pulled away from him. “Hands of, dude, I’m not your girlfriend,” he muttered, slouching in the direction Dean had pointed, and Dean frowned, but Sam had been in a foul mood all day, and yeah, probably he was having a little trouble adjusting to normal life again (or whatever passed for normal for a Winchester, anyway) and that was fair enough, right? At any rate, he started digging, and Dean figured it was time to join him.
In the end, Sam burned the bones while Dean distracted the spirit. At the last minute, though, the guy seemed to realise what was going on and wheeled his horse in the direction of Sam, a hoof flying out and catching him in the ribs just before both horse and rider dissolved into nothing. Sam fell back, and Dean felt a shock of fear in his stomach, even though he knew, he knew that it had only been a tap, nothing to worry about. He raced forward, reaching for Sam to help him up, to check he was OK, and Sam slapped him away, hard, and struggled to his feet, taking a step back.
“I told you not to touch me,” he spat, and Dean froze, hands still outstretched like a moron, but he couldn’t move, he could only stare. Sam shrugged his shoulders deeper into the winter jacket he was wearing and stalked off without a word, and Dean was left standing, trying to work out what had just happened, because yesterday Sam had been OK with Dean touching him, and it’d been hard, yeah, because Dean was still terrified every time he reached out, but it got easier every time, and it had been getting better, and now Dean didn’t know any more, he just didn’t know.
But things didn’t get better all at once, right? There were bound to be hitches along the way (except that it hadn’t been Sam who had instituted the ‘no touching’ rule in the first place), it wasn’t just a case of getting over it and moving on. So this, this was nothing more than a glitch, not even that much, just Sam being irritable, right? Right. Right.
Dean trailed after Sam and felt his fingers burning where Sam had pushed them away.
----
Forty days
----
Sam woke up to the sound of the loudspeakers above him announcing closing time in fifteen minutes. He shuddered, pulling his coat tighter around himself and trying to ease the crick in his neck that came from sleeping curled up in the bathroom stall. His entire body ached, and he felt cold and numb, longing for space to stretch out his cramped legs.
Except finding space meant going outside, and outside was a library and a world full of people who stared at him like they knew, like they knew that even his own
But Sam wasn’t thinking about that, he wasn’t (except soon he was going to have to, because the library was closing and he would have to go back to the motel room and Dean would be there, and Sam didn’t know if he could stand it, not any more, God, everything was so screwed up in his head). Someone came into the bathroom, the door banging, and Sam jerked, flinching before he could stop himself, which was stupid, laughable, because who would find him here, in the bathroom of the public library in some crappy little town where even the day’s newspapers seemed to be out of date (except that Dean already knew where he was, Dean could find him any time if he wanted to, and what if he wanted to, what if he wanted oh God
Sam had to get out. He had to get out of the goddamn bathroom stall, out of the library, somewhere where he could breathe, but there was someone out there and he couldn’t, he couldn’t, so he waited with his heart in his throat until he heard whoever it was leave. Then he grabbed his bag and hesitated, hand on the lock (because he was safe with it locked, right? except that he wasn’t safe anywhere any more), before finally pushing the door open.
No-one noticed him as he walked through the library, head down, shoulders hunched, going as fast as he could without attracting attention from the few patrons who were still there at this hour. No-one ever noticed, so why did he always feel like everyone was looking at him? Why was he so worried about the people out here, when the real problem was
Some guy called after him as he banged out of the door, but Sam wasn’t listening, Sam wasn’t thinking, he was just moving, trying as hard as he could to find a space where he didn’t feel like pieces of him were being torn away with every breath, where the light didn’t hurt his eyes and the air didn’t scratch his throat and then someone was grabbing his arm by the elbow, saying you dropped this, but Sam didn’t even look, because
And then he was falling, he’d been running, he thought he’d been running but he was falling and he could still feel the fingers on his arm even though there was nothing there, no-one there, he was somewhere in an empty lot and lying on the ground like he’d tripped or something (only he didn’t remember tripping), and there was Dean, there was Dean and this time there was no demon in him, Sam knew as sure as he knew his own name, it was just Dean, holding him down, smiling like it was a big fucking joke and and Sam didn’t think
Dark. It was dark and Sam was still lying on the ground and Dean was gone (Dean had never been there). The gravel was sharp beneath his palms and he knew that he should get up, but he was so fucking tired, sleeping under bushes and in the corners of empty warehouses for four days had left him wrung-out and useless (and wasn’t that a joke, because it was like he was homeless except that he spent every night in a perfectly good motel room with a perfectly good bed and the only problem was his
Sam scrambled to his feet, brushing the gravel out of his hair. His stuff was scattered across the lot, and he didn’t remember how that had happened, but then he was having trouble remembering a lot of stuff these days (except the things he didn’t want to remember, he had no trouble with them). He had to get back. Dean would be worried, and if he was worried he would come out looking for Sam and he would want to talk to him, to make sure he was OK. Sam wasn’t sure he could handle that. Right now, he wasn’t sure he could handle anything, he just wanted everything to just stop.
But it wouldn’t stop. Nothing stopped, it just kept hurtling on faster and faster, and the longer it went on, the more Sam became convinced that the final destination was a brick wall, but he was helpless to do anything about it. Something inside him was broken, he was pretty sure of that, but he had no idea what it was or how to fix it, and the only person who might have known had turned out not to be the person Sam thought he was at all.