With Spit and a Prayer

Many thanks to Angel Jade, Starflow, From across the Pond and HalfBloodPhoenix for their kind and generous reviews.

From across the Pond: No worries, I am a big fan of concrit :D. I hope you feel this chapter has the plot moving in a direction you like more.

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With Spit and a Prayer, Chapter Eight

Forty-four days
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Sam was awake.

He was always awake these days, or at least it seemed that way. His eyes felt like they were full of grit, so that it hurt to blink, and he kept them open until they started watering and the view of the shadowed bed less than an arms-reach away blurred into a mess of formless shapes and swirls of darkness, and then he kept them open some more, just to see how long he could stand it.

Dean shifted in his sleep, and Sam felt every muscle in his body tense instantaneously.

Dean had dreams. Sam had figured that out now, had heard a couple more of them over the endless hours he had spent staring into the darkness. It was weird, because he didn’t really remember Dean ever having had dreams before, not the sort of dreams that wake you up anyway, not like Sam’s dreams. Of course, the dreams that Dean had now weren’t like Sam’s dreams either, Sam’s dreams left him shaking and sweating with fear, clutching at the sheets and desperate to escape, Sam’s dreams didn’t leave him with a hard-on and his brother’s name on his lips. Sam didn’t know what Dean dreamt about, but he was pretty sure it wasn’t pain and blood.

Except maybe it was. Sam’s memory of the night in Biloxi was pretty foggy still, and although sometimes it would come back to him like it was happening all over again (Dean looking down at him with that happy grin, holding him down, like it was all a game), afterwards he rarely remembered much about the details, but he did remember that there had been both pain and blood. Did Dean dream about that? Was that what he’d wanted, all this time? Did he just want to fuck Sam, or did he want to hurt him, to force him? And how, how in hell had Sam never known?

Sam chewed on the edes of his cuticles and wished his nails would grow faster so he could bite them down. It was a week now, more than a week, since Sam had overheard the first dream, and he felt like it should be getting better, like somehow he should be figuring it out, but all he could think was Dean. Dean, his brother, and what did it mean, what could it mean? He felt like he was sinking in a thick, black, mire, the edges there, but too far for him to reach, and every day he slipped further down and try as he might he couldn’t figure out how to get to dry land. When he slept, crammed into awkward spaces and dozing fitfully he saw himself there, coated in grime, reaching out pointlessly, and always he would open his mouth to call for Dean, because his brother would save him, his brother always saved him. But in his dreams, Dean was dead.

The grief of it carried over into his waking life (although sometimes he thought there was really no distinction between awake and asleep any more, everything seemed unreal and deformed, like his nightmares had followed him out of sleep), and sometimes he found grief welling up inside him, desperate, closing his throat and burning behind his eyes. He remembered how it was from before, from Jessica, and this was no less intense, to the point where sometimes he had to look around to prove to himself that Dean was still there.

And Dean was. Dean was always there, watching him with hooded eyes when he thought Sam wasn’t looking, making jokes and bossing him around and being Dean, but Sam wasn’t fooled, Sam had heard what Dean whispered in the depths of the night, and he knew that the Dean he thought he knew was gone, maybe had never existed. The thought filled him with a mixture of rage and shame that took his breath away, because all his life he had known that if everything else failed, Dean would always be there, that Dean loved him no matter how badly he screwed up, and now he wondered, wondered if all this time Dean had just wanted

And there it was, the panic again, God, sometimes Sam could lay this out in his mind like it was someone else’s life, a case he was working on, each piece set in place and the most likely conclusions drawn (Dean said his name and woke up hard. Dean had raped him. Dean had wanted it.), but others even skirting near the idea sent him into a spiral of fear, until he had to get out, to get away. Nothing was working. It wasn’t that it didn’t make sense, because it did (Dean had wanted it), but just that it didn’t help, knowing it didn’t help, and Sam didn’t know whatelse to do because he knew that something had to help, something, and if knowledge didn’t and Dean couldn’t, then...

Sam felt the core of his spine turn to ice as another thought struck him. Maybe he was wrong. Maybe instead of fighting the mire, he should let himself be pulled down – God, it would be easier, anyway. Maybe that was what he was meant to do, what he was good for, because Dean thought so anyway, and Dean would know.

Maybe Dean could help.

----

Forty-five days

Dean woke up, his heart in his throat and the feel of Sam’s skin against his still burning across his body, and realised that something was wrong, something was different. He swallowed, squeezing his eyes shut for a moment and willing this all to just go. Away, but when he opened them the water-stained ceiling was the same, the hardness against his belly was the same, Sam’s empty bed was the same.

Sam’s bed was empty.

Dean sat up sharply, only to see Sam sitting at the little splintery coffee table, watching him. He felt his heart start to beat faster, if that was even possible, so fast and hard that he thought he might break a rib. Shit. Shitshitshitshit, had he woken Sam up? Did Sam know, Christ, did he know?

But no, there was no way he could know, not what was going on in Dean’s head. Sometimes, Dean felt like he was going to have an aneurysm from keeping it all inside, locked up in the secrecy and privacy of his mind, but God, he was glad of that right now, glad that the poison inside him couldn’t leak out and hurt Sam (any more than he already had). He cleared his throat. “What are you doing awake?”

Sam shrugged, but his eyes never left Dean. “Couldn’t sleep,” he said, and there was some tone to his voice that set Dean glancing around the room for a threat, but there was nothing to see. “And you?” Sam asked, and Dean once again got the unsettling feeling that something was wrong, something was different.

“Uh,” he said, rucking up the sheets more so they would hide his arousal (though Sam couldn’t know, there was no way he could know). “I, uh, had a... dream.”

Sam raised an eyebrow. “Bad?”

Dean licked his lips and wished to God it was that simple. “Yeah. Listen, dude, I gotta shower.” He climbed out of the bed carefully, crossed the room with his body half-turned away, aware of Sam’s eyes on him the whole time.

It wasn’t until he got into the shower and put the water on full blast that he realised that Sam had been looking straight at him.

----

After an hour, Dean figured it was safe to go back into the bedroom. His erection had pretty much died down, and Sam had probably gone to sleep by now anyway, Sam had been sleeping OK lately, hadn’t had a nightmare since the thing with the pills. He pulled his t-shirt and sweatpants back on and slipped out the door, only to become suddenly aware that someone was waiting for him. Shit.

He dropped into a fighting stance and was halfway through the first punch when he realised it was Sam and deflected it at the last moment. Sam didn’t move, didn’t flinch; he was standing way too close, staring at Dean like it was going out of style.

“Jesus Christ, Sam, you scared the crap out of me,” Dean muttered, straightening up and running a hand through his hair, but Sam took a step closer, then another one, and Jeez, he was really invading Dean’s personal space now, what the hell, and then Sam grabbed him around the waist and pulled him close, pressed their bodies together.

“What the fuck?” Dean said, his voice coming out almost in a squeak, and he pushed, trying to shove Sam away from him, but Sam’s arms around his back were like a vice and Dean felt panic tingle through his nerve endings and shit shit his cock start to twitch. “Sam!” he yelled, “get the fuck off me!”

Sam looked down at him, his face angry, set. “This is what you want,” he said, and the words washed over Dean like icy water. “You want this. You want it.”

“What?” Dean said, shoving again desperately, but the muscles in his arms seemed to have turned to Jello, and Sam was clinging on for dear life and oh Christ, oh Christ he was half-hard now. “Sam, what are you talking about?”

“It’s OK,” Sam said, and Dean couldn’t remember ever having heard his voice sound quite that way before. “It’s OK, Dean, you don’t have to hide it. If that’s what you want. It’s OK.”

“What?” Dean said again, and he really couldn’t do this, he couldn’t make sense of what Sam was saying (what was Sam saying?) and concentrate on trying to push him away at the same time, and then Sam ground his pelvis into Dean’s and Dean felt his cock go all the way up and he pulled back and slugged Sam as hard as he could.

Sam staggered back, letting go of Dean for just moment, but it was long enough for Dean to be across the room with a chair between him and Sam and a million questions swirling in his brain. “Jesus,” he said, gripping onto the back of the chair until his fingers sank into the soft upholstery. “Sam, what-- what?”

Sam shook his head, rubbing at his cheek where Dean had hit him. “I know it’s weird,” he said. “But I get it, I do.”

Dean clenched his jaw. “Well, would you mind letting me in on it? Because from where I’m standing it looks like you’ve gone nuts.”

Sam rolled his eyes, and God, the expression looked so normal in the middle of all this insanity that Dean felt like something in the world had just snapped and somehow nightmares had slipped through into real life. “You can stop lying to me now,” Sam said, spreading his arms wide. “I know you want it. Well, you can. Take it, if that’s what you want.”

Dean stared. “What...” he said, but his voice broke and his throat was so dry it hurt to speak. He swallowed a couple of times. “Sam, what exactly are you offering me here? What is it you think I want?” And right then, all he wanted was to go back to Biloxi and nuke the goddamn town until there was nothing left but a hole in the ground.

Sam looked away then, for the first time since Dean had come out of the bathroom. “Don’t...” he said. “Don’t make me say it. Just do it. For God’s sake, do it.”

“No, Sam,” Dean said, and he wanted to go over there, to grab his brother and shake the truth out of him, to hold him and take all of this crap away, but he had a horrible feeling he knew what it was that Sam was saying, and he was still hard and he wasn’t going anywhere near Sam. “I’m not doing anything. I need to know what’s going on in that goddamn screwed-up brain of yours, because you’re really freaking me out here.”

Sam’s head snapped up, and he was across the room in two strides, grabbing hold of Dean’s wrist (though Dean kept the chair between them, shuffling desperately to make sure it stayed there). “God,” Sam said, his eyes bright with anger, “why do you always have to be so goddamn stubborn? Can’t you just for once take something for yourself? Why are you always thinking about me?”

Dean gaped at that, couldn’t think of a single goddamn thing to say, because thinking about Sam was as natural and necessary as breathing, and no-one ever told him to stop doing that. And then there was this... thing, and Dean didn’t know what it was (except he was afraid he did), but he knew it was bad, it was really bad, and he realised that he’d been ignoring the signs, thinking that Sam was getting better because that was what he wanted to think, and now there was this man standing in front of him, flushed and wild-eyed, offering something that Dean was never going to take, and the very offer made him think that his brother had lost his mind.

“Aren’t you going to say anything?” Sam asked, his grip on Dean’s wrist painfully tight now.

“Please,” Dean said. “I just want everything to be back to normal.” Normal, that was what Sam always wanted.

Sam stared at him for a long moment, and Dean thought he was going to make another lunge, and readied himself to fight him off, but then suddenly the fingers around his wrist were gone, and the door had opened and slammed shut, and Sam was gone.

Dean stood still for a long time, staring at the air where his brother had last been. He thought about going after him, but God, that really didn’t seem like a good idea. He would give him a little space. This whole thing was freakish, but maybe Sam had just had a nightmare or something and got all mixed up. Maybe.

Dean sat on the bed and put his head in his hands. Everything was going to hell, and he didn’t have the first idea how to stop it.

----
Forty-eight days
----

Dean ground the heels of his hands into his eyes and tried not to scream. August was as hot as hell, hotter even than July had been, and Sam had been missing for four days.

The motel room looked like a bombsite, papers littering the floor, salt scattered everywhere, one of the comforters in shreds from where Dean had ripped it up in a fit of impotent rage two days before. He’d been through everything, everything, searched every corner of this fucking town and seen not a single trace of Sam or any clue as to where he might have gone. He’d even tried the trick with CCTV cameras, charming and cheating his way into the various businesses and institutions that ran them near the motel, but either Sam had been hiding from them, or he had vanished into thin air. At this point, Dean didn’t know which was worse.

Something took him. Something had to have taken him, because the alternative – that Sam had left Dean, that Sam had left Dean because somehow, he knew, and now he was out there alone and unprotected and it was Dean’s fault, well that was worse. Dean could get him back if something had taken him, he could kill the damn thing and he could get Sammy back, but if Sam knew, if he knew (and he did know, it was the only explanation for the scene just before Sam walked out and didn’t come back, Jesus, he knew), Dean wasn’t sure there was any way back from that. How could he protect Sam from himself?

Well, he was damn sure he couldn’t protect Sam from anything unless he found him first. Sam was pretty good at getting lost, but Dean was damn good at finding him, and until he did, he wasn’t going to think about whether Sam knew or not, because tearing himself apart wasn’t going to help anyone (and because he couldn’t even bear the thought, couldn’t). All he had to do was find Sam. He just had to find him, and then everything would be OK, everything would be OK.

Dean knew he was kidding himself, but if kidding himself kept him functioning in this situation, then that was OK by him. He shrugged on his jacket again, aware of a painful gnawing in his guts and trying to remember when he had last eaten, when he had last slept, heading out of the door even as he thought it, feeling ragged and torn at the edges, but still standing, still going, still ready to rescue Sam from whatever had got him.

And this time, he got lucky. He’d done a pass of all the bars in town with Sam’s photo twice already, but there was no harm in being thorough, and this time, this time a pretty barmaid smiled at the picture and gave Dean a name. Twenty minutes later, Dean was picking the lock of an old clapboard house in a quiet neighbourhood, and if his hands were trembling, well, that was just because he hadn’t eaten for a while.

The house was quiet, the downstairs empty and still. Dean took the stairs slowly, even though he wanted to run, wanted to yell Sam’s name, because he had no idea what he was walking into and he wanted to keep surprise on his side. He could hear noises coming from one of the doors, and it was slightly ajar, so Dean pushed it open quietly and felt horror freeze a path through his veins.

Sam was lying on his back, unconscious and naked on the bed, his limbs sprawled out, and there was some guy, some stranger on top of him, and he was--

Whatever it was he was doing (and Dean knew, and it flooded his stomach with white-hot rage), it was stopping now. He was across the room before he even had time to think it, dragging the guy off Sam and flinging him into the nearest wall. The guy’s head cracked hard off the laster, leaving a dent, and he let out a grunt of surprise and said what the hell?

Dean wasn’t in a conversational mood, though, and got in two or three punches before the guy dropped to the floor, trying to cover himself up, and he was saying he asked me to, he asked me, but Dean wasn’t listening, didn’t want to listen, to hear those words that made no sense, all he wanted to do was kill this guy who had been doing that to his brother.

He dropped down and threw another punch, easily getting through the guy’s attempts to block, and he felt the crunch of bone, something breaking under his fists, and the sound just fed into the all-consuming hatred that was the only thing he had right now, the only thing that made sense. There was blood everywhere, on his fists, on the floor, but mostly on the man’s face, and Dean switched his attention to the ribs, wanting to hurt, wanting this guy to remember this moment every time he breathed for the rest of his life.

Please, please, the guy groaned, desperately trying to use his arms to protect himself, but Dean calmly bent his hand back until he felt the wrist give, and then stood up, thinking a few well-aimed kicks would probably make him feel pretty good right about now. And that was when Sam groaned.

Dean’s anger was pushed aside in an instant, and he turned sharply, making it to the bed before his next breath. Sam was still unconscious, his face tensed in lines of pain; his neck was circled with bruises, some new, some a little older, and Dean knew that he was going to throw up pretty soon. He reached, pulled the cover up over Sam’s body carefully, and just stared. Behind him, he heard the sound of the guy staggering out of the room, but right now, that didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except that Sam was here, Sam was going out looking for his worst nightmare, Sam had fallen apart and Dean was following him, and every time he thought things couldn’t get worse, he was proved wrong. He was always wrong. He’d thought he could do this, fix Sam, get them both through this, keep his brother safe.

He’d been wrong about that, too.