Hunter's Don't Cry

Title: Hunters Don’t Cry
Rating: PG-13, possibly R (themes)
Warnings: evil!Sam, violence, vague mention of possible future non-con, attempted suicide, angst, minor character death, incest, slash
Spoilers: S2
Pairings: Sam/Dean
Summary: He had good reason for his actions. Even more so for his barely contained fear. Sam was close.
Setting: S2 sometime
Distribution: If you’ve had my permission before, you have it now. Anyone else, ask first please.
Disclaimer: I do not claim to own the characters in the fic, nor do I make money from borrowing them.


With shaking hands and a fixed expression of determination, Dean pushed down every last bit of anxiety and opened the motel room door, his eyes wincing at the bright light. His muscles tensed as he took that first step outside, eyes darting around the open space for signs of danger. His breathing was forcibly steady, every movement calculated and wary.

He had good reason for his actions. Even more so for his barely contained fear.

Sam was close.

****

Sam leaned back into the leather seat of the stolen car, stretching his legs as much as was possible in the small space. He was restless, impatient. His face twisted into an expression of pure annoyance, he wouldn’t wait much longer, the games were getting old.

The motel room door opened tentatively, a pale figure stepping out into the light. Sam couldn’t quite see his expression, but the body language said it all. The usual bravado, cocky attitude and tough guy swagger were gone.

Sam smiled, lips twisting into a smirk. He’d caused this. Dean was a shadow of his former self, half-beaten and close to defeat. Months had passed, more time than Sam could have anticipated, but it had all been worth it. Or rather, it would. The rewards were yet to come.

****

“Coffee. Black,” Dean stated, his voice low but demanding. He hadn’t slept. So long now. How could he close his eyes when his dreams were worse than his reality?

No time. Drink the coffee and go. Should never have stopped here.

A body collided with Dean, hitting his ass and pressing him into the counter. His throat tightened as he span round, prepared to fight, only to come face to face with an old man trying to correct his balance.

“Sorry,” the man mumbled, staggering off, leaving Dean to feel his pulse echoing in his windpipe, the speed making it difficult to tell where one beat ended and another started.

“Your coffee,” the bored waitress drawled, turning her attention to someone else, leaving Dean to stare at the steaming cup of jet black liquid, promising him some reprieve from the sleepless nights. He took it and headed out to the car, detesting the beat up piece of shit he was forced to drive now he was being hunted. He missed his car. Missed his passenger more.

Can’t think about that. Won’t think about that.

Dean got in the drivers seat after checking the backseat, his eyes betraying his exhaustion. For the millionth time he considered just giving in, waiting for the inevitable…

God, it hurt. Hurt to breathe, hurt to keep fighting. His fingers tightened on the steering wheel, his knuckles white.

“Damnit, Sam,” he whispered, his voice shaking. He felt the pain of tears in his eyes and grit his teeth to force them back down. He may have been on the brink of destruction but his training was the only thing keeping him going. He wouldn’t cry. Because men don’t. Hunters don’t.

****

Sam watched Dean drive away. This would be the last time he chased his brother. Tonight Dean was back where he belonged.

****

“Sam.” The journey was over. Nowhere left to run. His voice was filled with the pain of almost a year of emotional torture, manipulation…and the threats of so much worse. Dean had expected this moment for a while now, dreamt of it and feared it. Somehow it fell short of his expectations. The monster Sam had become was merely the face of his baby brother, dimples and floppy brown hair…hardly the image of a demon king.

“I hope you’ve enjoyed your freedom, Dean,” Sam said, his voice deceptively caring.

Dean smiled regretfully. “Can’t say I have.” He shrank back, almost defensively. “You’ve been on my tail this whole time.” It wasn’t a question. “Why, Sam?”

Sam smiled, his features laced with a darkness that looked foreign on the young man’s face. “I like playing with you, you should know that by now.”

Dean couldn’t help but look away, his heart clenching painfully. “Had fun?”

“Bored now.” Sam leered. “Time for a new game. You know you can’t run from me. It’s time to learn a new lesson.”

Flinching, despite his best efforts not to, Dean pressed his back firmly against the wall. “I couldn’t save you. I’m supposed to stop you.”

Sam laughed, a real Sam-laugh that only made things more difficult for Dean. “You really think you can?”

Dean’s forced smile was tainted by the defeat in his eyes.

“See, I knew you couldn’t be that deluded. But really…did you think running from me would achieve anything?” Sam asked, amused by his power over the once proud and cocky man. “I’ve killed everybody who could possibly help you, you’re on your own, Dean.”

Dean didn’t answer, clenching his jaw and refusing to look at his brother.

“You’re pathetic.” Sam smirked, enjoying every minute of this. “Look at you! You have nothing, absolutely nothing. No one would give a damn if I killed you right here. You can’t fight me, you can’t run…why the hell are you even trying?”

“I guess I just have nothing better to do,” Dean answered, flatly. “You may be all I have left, but I’m not going down without a fight. We were taught better than that.”

“Dad isn’t here to pat you on the head like a goddamn dog, Dean. Just give into me. It’ll be me and you, just like always,” Sam urged, determinedly.

“Except you’re killing people, trying to take over the world and there’s the little issue of you thinking I’m gonna bend over and let you fuck me,” Dean growled, his despair giving way to his anger.

“Dean,” Sam smirked, “I don’t need you to let me. But it’d be easier for you if you did.”

Dean couldn’t help but shove Sam away from him, disgusted by the closeness his brother had forced upon him, but with frightening speed Sam grabbed his wrists and pinned him against the rough brick wall. “Fuck you, Sam. You should have fought it! You’re everything we’ve spent our whole lives fighting; you’re exactly what you didn’t want to be. You’re not even Sam anymore, you’re no better than them! My brother is dead.”

“You. Wish,” Sam whispered, spitefully. “Gonna take you apart until you can’t breathe without me. I’m your everything, Dean. Just like before. Only, now I call the shots. You’re mine.”

Dean pulled himself together enough to look into his brother’s eyes, every bit of energy focused into a look of determination. “Got nothing left to lose, Sammy. Do your worst.”

Sam pressed up against the older man seductively. “I’ll do my best.”

“Still lame with the comebacks, Sammy. Maybe there’s still a bit of you in there after all,” Dean jeered, the hopelessness of the situation only fuelling his desire to go down in a blaze of sarcasm.

Sam sneered, cupping Dean’s chin threateningly. “Keep hoping, Dean. It’ll make it all the more fun watching you break.”

****

As Sam began to change, Dean refused to accept it. He made cracks of course, occasionally asked Sam what the hell his problem was. But beyond that, he ignored it, told Bobby everything was fine, continued as if everything was the same. He’d just lost his dad, he couldn’t lose Sam too.

Then Sam began to manipulate him. Dean didn’t notice at first, it was so subtle. But when he clutched a knife covered in human blood, realising Sam had given him false information, tricked him into murdering an innocent… Well, it was hard to ignore the fact that Sam wasn’t quite Sam anymore.

Dean faced down his brother, demanding answers, holding a gun in his hands as if he had the will to use it. Both Winchesters knew that wasn’t going to happen. Sam also knew he had the power to stop Dean if he tried.

Dean learnt very quickly how much power Sam had developed. They fought for less than a minute before Dean found himself without his weapon, pinned to a wall by an invisible force, practically breathless as his body was crushed against the ugly wallpaper of their motel room. He was beaten to the brink of unconsciousness as Sam leant against the door, lazily watching the scene, his face emotionless. No hand had been laid upon him and yet he was a mess of blood and bruises when it finally stopped. Dean hazily tried to contemplate just how quickly Sam had developed those powers of his.

He tried to get to his feet, only to find that was not allowed. His mouth opened, ready to question/threaten/beg his brother. He didn’t know which, but he didn’t have a chance to anyway.

“You’re too late, Dean. Whatever plans you have to save me, you’re too late,” Sam told him, voice devoid of emotion. “Things are going to change. The world is going to change. Everything dad warned you about…it’s true.”

Dean painfully replied, his voice not quite as strong as his belief in his words. “Not too late. You’re still in there, Sam. Not gonna let you…”

“Too late.” Sam had almost seemed regretful at that point, as if he’d given up.

It gave Dean hope.

“I should kill you,” Sam told him, flatly. “That’s what they expect.”

Dean wasn’t ready to give up, not yet. He couldn’t and wouldn’t accept that Sam was too far gone to save. “How did you let this happen, Sammy?”

“It was always going to happen,” Sam answered, sharply. “You couldn’t have stopped this, no one could. But now…well, now I’m faced with a choice. You see, if I let you live you’re going to try and save me. Then, when you fail, you’ll try and stop me. Or you’ll get yourself killed trying. And I can’t let that happen.”

“So you’re just gonna kill me now?” Dean asked, his emotions so utterly confused and conflicted that he barely understood what he was saying.

Sam hesitated, the conflict evident on his face. “Not ready to lose you yet. So I have to keep you.”

“Keep me?”

“I’m learning so many new things, experiencing new feelings. But some things are still the same. I still want you,” Sam explained, no longer looking at Dean. “You’re gonna be mine. You’ll fight it at first but sooner or later you’ll realise it’s for the best. I can make you enjoy it, if you want me to.”

Dean’s eyebrows showed his confusion perfectly. “What the hell you talking about?”

Sam fixed his eyes back on the trapped hunter. “Doesn’t matter. You’ll understand later. Right now, we need to make sure you understand what I’m capable of.”

****

Dean had had no idea at the time. But Sam showed him. And with every life that was taken before Dean’s very eyes, he lost a piece of the hope he clung to that somehow he’d get them out of this. Somehow, he’d bring Sammy back.

After the show of power Sam had put on just for him, his little brother took to chaining him up, keeping him prisoner. Dean endured days of solitude with no food or water. He was forced to listen to his brother’s rantings, which quickly became violent, vicious…and a true reflection of the evil growing inside Sam. He saw the emotionless shell of Sam become more like a demon every day they were together.

And the admission from the motel room where everything changed, that too was made clear, more and more as Sam embraced his fall from grace. Dean feared Sam’s look of desire more than anything, knowing that it was only a matter of time before Sam took what he wanted.

Before that could happen, Dean escaped. The world was still unchanged, but from the newspapers Dean quickly discovered demonic activity was at an all time high. It was only a matter of time before the demons started their war.

Dean immediately headed for Bobby’s. He knew full well Sam would anticipate the move but Dean was far too desperate to try anything else.

There was no body. At least, nothing you could call a body. Sam had managed to cover practically the whole room in blood and other parts Dean couldn’t bring himself to identify. Bobby was dead.

Dean soon discovered every last contact he had was no better off than poor Bobby.

Alone, barely recovering from Sam’s sporadic violent outbursts and emotionally destroyed by the events of the past month…Dean ran, out of habit. He blindly followed orders of a dead father whispering in his ear, knowing that it would only be a matter of time before Sam found him.

He attempted suicide once, only to find himself in hospital. No one could tell him who had saved his life, but Dean already knew. He knew Sam was close by, always close by…waiting. He knew Sam wanted him alive and feared the reason why.

He quickly learnt that any conversation beyond simple requests for a room or a bottle of whisky would lead to a violent death. A young girl who tried her luck in the diner, an old man trying to make conversation at the petrol station, a teenage boy asking Dean to score him some alcohol… God knows how many others.

All dead.

Dean resorted to locking himself away in his motel room, avoiding human contact, unable to eat or sleep. He figured out the reason, just before the day Sam reclaimed him. Why Sam had let him run so long. Why Sam would keep up the charade of Dean’s ‘escape’.

****

“I’m tired, Sam,” Dean muttered, sinking back into the passenger seat of Sam’s car. “Tired of running, fighting. Don’t care anymore.”

Sam looked over at him from the driver’s seat as they made their way to God knows where. “It’s gonna be okay, Dean. Just get some sleep. I’m gonna take care of you.”

Dean was beaten. Perhaps not completely and maybe he never would be, but the toll of the last year weighed heavily on him and it was too much to bear. Sam’s soothing promise was enticing, even if he knew what it meant. Heavy eyelids that could no longer be ignored finally closed and the world went black.

Dean sank into darkness willingly, surrendering himself to peaceful slumber. There, in a shiny black car that felt like home, two young men fought playfully over which radio station to listen to. With sarcastic smiles on their faces, those two young men drove into a landscape filled with the light of the midday sun, their future uncertain, but their present blessed with a bond that neither believed could ever be broken.


End.