Chapter 13: Portrait of a Hunter as a Young Man

Heart beating like a trapped bird in his chest, Sam sat up and peeled off his shirt and hoodie with shaking fingers. His lips tingled hot where Dean had kissed him. By the time he’d stripped the rest of his clothes off, his whole body was trembling, not with cold this time, but with nervous, exhilarated anticipation. He watched Dean, eyes wide.

The flame floated over his skin, the hollow of his throat, the wide muscled chest, the curve of the hip bone, mapping Sam's body, Dean's hand lightly turning him to see better. Shadows bent with him, etching Sam's muscles in hard lines.

"I don't remember drawing that picture," said Dean, fingers tracing the length of Sam's leg, "But I wish I did."

The sheets hit the floor, the pillows balled up and stuffed behind Sam to prop him up. "Here." said Dean, placing Sam's left hand behind him on the headboard, and cutting an emergency candle into four and teasing out the wicks and arranging them to Sam's right on the table, Dean pulled out his journal and sat on the end of the bed.

"That old picture wasn't you," said Dean, digging for pencils, "I want this one."

Sam shifted slightly, his whole body abuzz. The kiss, that touch of Dean’s hand on his bare skin, lying here naked with Dean’s eyes roaming his whole body… it was too much, too much good after that terrible waking, and it wasn’t nearly enough. He found himself short of breath.

“Dean, do you remember anything? About us?” he asked quietly.

Dean stared at the blank page. "No," he said, looking up and back for the first outline, "I wouldn't have even guessed til we started digging through the computers at Fort Cloud."

He narrowed his eyes, measuring Sam's arms, pencil scuffing across paper. "There wasn't a whole lot in that last recording. We talked. You sounded...unhappy, probably been unhappy for a long time," said Dean, Adam's apple bobbing, "And I made the first move."

Knowing this, that he hadn’t pushed anything on Dean, relaxed Sam, and he nodded. After a few seconds, he said, “I remember this. I remember you drawing me. You looked… really happy. And I felt good, all tired and sweaty and lazy, like you do after you’ve been screwing.”

Sam continued, “I remember the way your thighs felt.” He closed his eyes for a second, and the smell of melting wax and the sound of pencil scratching on paper plunged him further into memory. “Wrapped around my hips.”

The pencil didn't stop. The candles didn't explode. The window didn't burst outward in a shower of glass as though Sam's confession had ignited the room. Only in Dean's head.

Sam shivered as a chill passed through him, but deep in his core he was burning hot, and he wouldn’t stop this for the world.

The way their chests had slid together as Sam had crawled up to kiss Dean, his brother’s mouth tasting faintly of blood. This was like a waking wet dream, only with Dean watching him, and that made it so much better.

“You were… “

Dean’s silence gave Sam permission to say things that he perhaps wouldn’t have had the courage to say otherwise. “You were so hard against my stomach. And you… “ Sam felt his whole face go hot as the vivid memory of plunging into Dean swept over him. You were so hot inside. He gripped the headboard tight as all the muscles from his navel to his thighs contracted, and he felt himself swelling, lengthening against his hip.

“Jesus, Dean,” he said, voice a harsh rasp. “You felt so fucking good.”

Dean listened, filing all this away to the little black box in his head, where it would be ruthlessly exploited the next time he got drunk in the shower. He circled an x beneath Sam's collar bone where the tattoo would go, and moved on the shoulder. The tricep. The joint. Only little things. If he took in all the things at once, if he took in all of Sam stretched out on the bed with that look on his face, he would lose.

After several minutes, Sam’s breathing slowed from big, chest-expanding breaths to normal. In a softer voice, he said, “Do you know what I liked most about it though? The way you kissed me. Like you wanted me just as much as I wanted you.”

"Did I say anything?"

At Sam's puzzled expression, Dean looked at the ceiling and said, "I uh...I had a waitress in Iowa once, and afterward we were laying in bed and she said I never once called her 'darling' or 'beautiful' or anything I was supposed to call a girl. That I was a cold kind of player."

Sam’s eyes went unfocused as he scanned through his incomplete memories of that night. “You said my name. A lot, like, over and over. Like it meant something. And… you told me I was yours.” He watched the curve of Dean’s mouth, then said, “I couldn’t stop saying your name, either. I’d wanted to say it like that for so long, it just kept tumbling out of my mouth.”

Sam paused. There had been a moment, one that had knocked the breath out of Sam, had squeezed a warm fist around his heart. “You called me ‘baby boy,’” he said, feeling that warmth in his chest all over again.

Dean traced along Sam's face, first with his pencil and then with imaginary hands. Sam had always been a good fighter, with sharp reflexes and an instinct for guessing the opponent's strategy three or four moves in advance. Had any of that translated over? Had Sam read his body, moved with him in silent exploration, or had there been a lot of schoolboy fumbling?

Dean lay the paper and pencil aside. "It's getting late," he said, gently pulling the blankets over Sam, "You should sleep."

Dean lay beside him on top of the coverlet, tracking Sam's eyes, holding him there. Even with dawn two hours away, trucks were already pulling out for the morning deliveries. Foghorns sounded to one another in the dark, loud enough to cover the noise when they kissed and said each other's names and Dean's hand slid under the sheet and circled Sam's leaking cock and wrung it in one hard wet squeeze.

Sam made a high, hurt noise in his throat and thrust up into Dean’s hand, pressing his open mouth against the corner of Dean’s lips.

"Now you listen, you do whatever you have to do to kill those sons of bitches tomorrow, but you come back to me," Dean hissed, "You have to live."

“I will,” Sam said breathless, eyes closed, and he focused on his brother’s hand on his cock. He’d wanted Dean to touch him ever since Dean had stormed in and told him to strip, hell, ever since Dean had come to pick him up at Stanford, and it was perfect, the way Dean touched him, like he knew exactly what Sam needed. He gripped the back of Dean’s shirt, then slipped his fingers under the hem to skim his hand along Dean’s hot skin.

He could feel the hard shape of Dean’s cock through the coverlet, and he pressed his hip against it, wanting.

“Dean,” he moaned when Dean gave him a twisting, slippery squeeze, and he turned his head to find Dean’s mouth again. Dean coaxed him through it, Sammy, Sammy, into Sam’s mouth, the gentle words in stark, perfect contrast to the way Dean handled him; rough, the calluses on his palm sliding along Sam’s slick cock creating a friction that had Sam at the edge far before he wanted to be.

He dug his blunt fingernails into Dean’s back, and “Call me baby boy,” he breathed, and when Dean whispered it in his ear Sam came with a wordless cry, arching and spilling hot all over his brother’s hand.

“I promise I’ll come back to you,” he said once he could speak again, words soft and slurred, eyelids heavy. Dean kissed him one more time, lips gentle and clinging before they drew apart.

They listened to each other breathe, Sam fast fading against the pillow, and when his eyes fluttered into dreamless sleep, Dean showered and shaved and walked to the corner diner and walked back listening to the wind in the trees like they had a secret for him.

Sam woke hours later to the blare of Go Go Godzilla in the parking lot. Coffee steamed on the bedside table with SAM scrawled on the styrofoam.

Sam crawled out from under the covers shivering. He found his clothes lying in a heap on the floor and pulled them on. He felt loose and relaxed as he sipped on the hot coffee, despite the knowledge of what they might be up against today, and the words swarming at the edges of his consciousness. He stilled, cup half raised to his mouth, when he realized that they’d been gone ever since Dean had walked into the motel room and kissed him, and were only just now coming back.

He dressed for cold weather, double socks and a long-sleeved thermal under his layers. Leaving the beds a mess, he walked outside. He smiled when he saw Dean leaning against the Impala, the morning sun bright on his face.

Dean got right up to him, stepping on his toes. He wasn't smiling, but his eyes glittered green and he pressed the tip of his tongue to his upper teeth like Sam had seen him done on a thousand cute bartenders. "Car's packed," he whispered, conspiratorial, as if they were sneaking out while John was asleep, "You ready to roll?"

“Just about,” Sam said, and he grabbed Dean by the nape of his neck and kissed him hard on the mouth. He didn’t care that they were out in the open. Didn’t care that anyone could see them.

“Okay,” Sam said, a little breathless. “Now I’m ready.”

Dean's lips parted, cheeks and the tip of his nose pinked by the winter wind. He'd never had many high school sweethearts, none that lasted, but he knew this was different. His fingers found Sam's right hand hanging by his side, their breath steaming in the parking lot.

"I um, I got you something," said Dean, standing close so Sam couldn't see what he was getting out of his pocket, "I haven't used it in years, and it's only good for opening beer bottles, and you don't have to keep it..."

Dean took his wrist, his touch gentle, his eyes on the ground, as a ring slid onto Sam's finger "...But I meant to give it to you a long time ago."

Sam stared down at Dean’s ring on his hand, and a smile spread over his face. He’d missed Dean’s ring, the clink of it when he’d opened bottles, the tap of it on the steering wheel, the way Dean fiddled with it when he was nervous. It had been as much a part of Dean as his freckles, as his green eyes. Now it was as if he was wearing a part of Dean on his hand, a part that fit perfectly around his finger.

“Thank you,” Sam said quietly, and repressed the urge to kiss Dean again, suddenly shy about it. Then he reaffirmed the vow he’d made hours before, this time fierce and determined: “I promise I’ll come back to you. No matter what happens.”

Dean didn't meet his eyes, the poor macho bastard, but he held onto Sam a little longer and ducked his head and let out his breath and turned toward the car. "I'll take the first leg."

Chapter 14: Arkham

The roads on the outskirts of Arkham were depressing, title pawns and old men burning trash in shopping carts, but that was a Carnival cruise compared to what lay beyond the city limits.

Dean peered through the window. "That's not creepy at all."

The door to a general store stood open, a boy of seven or eight standing behind the register in an over-sized suit like one of those fairy tales where a child wishes to become a man and then changes back after midnight. A girl the same age pushed groceries onto the counter, soup and juice and frozen pizza, and the boy marked her down in a heavy brown ledger.

A flyer rolled across the sidewalk and caught in a tree. A man's photo sat above the caption HAVE YOU SEEN MY FATHER? and flipped up in the wind and vanished down the street.

Dean slowed the Impala to a crawl so that they could study the surroundings. The day, which had started out so bright, had taken on an overcast, muddy light. They passed by houses with their doors wide open like gaping black mouths. At least one house on every block had its windows busted. A handful of disconcertingly pale men in various stages of undress (at the sight of them, the alien words in Sam’s head swelled and lurched) lurked in the shadow of a narrow alley between deserted businesses with their signs still flipped to OPEN.

“Where is everybody?” Sam asked as they passed the dozenth car left idling or dead at the side of the road, doors open.

Dean stopped the car suddenly, pulling up to the curb. "Look." he said, pointing at a leaflet taped to a bookshop door. He stepped out and walked past a clerk so thin he looked like five broomsticks tied together and plucked the leaflet from the door and sat back in the car and looked at Sam. "It's her," he said, "It's the woman."

A dark-haired woman in pink, pumps, and pearls smiled at the camera. LADIES AUXILIARY 8:00 AT ARKHAM CHURCH OF THE COVENANT.

Dean checked the time. "We got a few hours, wanna scope out the place?"

Dread threatened to rise in Sam, but he pushed it down. This was what they were here for, after all. “Yeah, let’s go check it out.”

He took the leaflet from Dean. It was strange to see the priestess looking so normal, other than her eerie, wide-set eyes. "It's 1314 Main Street. That should be easy enough to find."

They cruised down the street, evidence of abandonment and decay growing more obvious as they reached the heart of the town. Identical fliers to the one in Sam's hand were stapled to telephone poles, taped to dirty windows, fluttering by in the cold, sea-scented breeze.

Dean took a left onto Main Street, and they counted the blocks before they reached the address. In the space where the Arkham Church of the Covenant should have occupied, there was only a large, weed-choked lot surrounded by a wrought-iron fence.

Dean scanned the field, chewing his lip but secretly relieved. "Maybe it's further back in the woods."

He leapt up onto the fence, but the trees distorted around him, some appearing to touch him while the others stretched miles away into the clouds. No wind blew but they rocked back and forth, hundreds of them, alive and more aware than any forest had a right to be. He stepped back and blinked. No, there were perhaps a dozen trees behind the field. Either way, he felt sick, and gripped Sam's arm to steady himself.

"It's late," said Dean, "Let's get a room. Maybe the files have something on this place."

Sam didn’t answer right away. His eyes were unfocused, mouth a thin line. “There’s something here. I don’t know what. But it’s… it’s loud.”

The words weren’t in the back of his mind any longer; they’d come up to the forefront, an echoing chant that he could barely think around. He let Dean coax him back into the car, and barely paid attention to the road on the way to the motel they’d seen on the way in.

“You check us in, okay?” he asked when they parked.

When Dean came back with the keys, Sam was standing in front of a motel door, trying unsuccessfully to turn the knob.

Dean dangled the key in front of him, a rusting antique as heavy as a grapefruit. "This might work faster," he said, shoving it in the keyhole, "Though honestly everything in this place is so worn down you could probably take the lock apart with a pencil."

He caught the look in Sam's eyes. "Maybe you oughta get some sleep."

“Yeah,” Sam said vaguely. He walked into the motel room and took a seat at the small table by the window, barely noticing when Dean shuffled in, laden with all their bags.

The words were deafening. He could feel power that had begun subtly when they’d entered the town and peaked when they’d stared at the abandoned lot, beginning to thrum through him, cold and squirming inside him. Sam took a deep breath and thumbed Dean’s ring on his finger, looking down at it and remembering with warmth the way Dean had kissed him the night before. The noise in his head receded from a shriek to a scream; a fractional difference, but definitely an improvement.

So he needed something to focus on. Speaking quietly, he tried counting through perfect squares. The Fibonacci sequence. All the digits of pi that he could remember.

“One. Two. Four. Eight. Sixteen. Thirty two. Sixty four. One twenty eight. Two fifty six,” he said.

A warm hand clapped his shoulder. "Dude, wake up, you ain't speaking English." said Dean, pushing Sam onto a bed. Except the bed felt off, the floor bending at strange angles as if the whole room were on a tilt. Dean kept his hand on Sam, waiting.

“It’s just so loud,” Sam said, and just as he realized his voice sounded all wrong, the mattress of the other bed exploded off its box springs, crashing into the wall. The tattoo on his back tingled.

But he felt… better. As if he’d cracked open a pressure valve and some of the steam had run out of him. Not enough, but he was afraid of what would happen if he kept speaking in that language, releasing the pressure, with Dean so close.

Sam ran his hands through his hair, making it a complete mess. He focused, enunciating carefully. “That wasn’t in English either, was it?” There, that came out right.

Sam hummed like a lightning rod, glass rattling in the windowpanes, but Dean took his hands and knelt down and looked him square in the eye and bit back the kind of Jedi Knight crack he always made when Sam scared him. "That bed probably sucked anyway," said Dean, "This has to have happened before, back at Fort Cloud, you just gotta remember how to dial it down."

Sam stared back, eyes glassy. “I don’t think… I don’t think it ramped up like this before. I think I had time to get used to it.” Or maybe they’d done something to him then, something to combat this overwhelming force. If so, there was nothing he could do about it now.

He closed his eyes as a surge flashed through him, making his teeth chatter and all the hair on his body stand on end. It was excruciating. Then he opened his eyes again, searching Dean’s face. “I know one thing that helps, though,” he said, and then he was standing, pulling Dean up with him and crowding into his space.

He kissed Dean, relentless and hard, and his big hand slid down to the crotch of Dean’s jeans, kneading at the shape of his dick through the denim as he held him close with a hand at the small of his back. Almost immediately, he felt some of the frenetic energy suffuse.

All down the street lights flickered, cracks starting at Sam's feet to branch across the room and up the walls, the trembling of the earth only quieting when Dean took Sam's face in his hands and gently kissed back, bodies swaying like two trees. "Slow down baby boy..."

It was like kissing marble, Sam was so cold, but Dean kept on, softly pressing his hand to Sam's chest until they were together on the bed, ignoring the little voice that said Sam was safe. Sam would never hurt him. Sam would never...lose control and splatter Dean's brains on the ceiling like caramel left too long on the stove.

Sam lay flat, hair fanned across the pillow while Dean straddled him and unbuckled Sam's belt. "Let's play a game."

The belt hit to the floor. "I say a word in English, you say it back to me in...whatever that scrabble is," said Dean, bending low so his mouth was close to Sam's, "Only you gotta say it nice."

Sam curled his hands around Dean’s hips, trying hard to keep his breathing steady. “Okay,” he whispered, leaning up to brush his lips against Dean’s.

Dean put his mouth to Sam's ear, fingers twisting Sam's boxers tight against his body. "Say my name."

Sam nuzzled into the hair at the side of Dean’s head, thinking furiously. There was no word for Dean but Dean. He knew this wasn’t what Dean wanted though, so he searched.

Gentle words weren’t part of his other vocabulary. There was no word for fraternal brother, only brother-in-arms. There was no word for lover, no word for partner, only rutting mate. He tried to combine these concepts in his head and got a spiky, violent word that stung when he thought of it. Not Dean at all.

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, smelling Dean’s hair. He took the word and remade it, sanding off the edges, slicing out the black at the heart of it. When he opened his mouth, it spiraled soft off of his tongue.

Dean held fast to him, listening to the word repair the damage. The walls squared themselves. The cracks closed. Hairline fractures in Dean's shoulder from the robot fight went away. Outside the open window the words "...probably take the lock apart with a pencil..." drifted upward, a little temporal leakage it seemed.

"See? It's not all blood and fire," said Dean, as footsteps creaked in the next room. Had someone called the police?

They kissed again, the air greasy with black magic. Sam was calmer but still throwing off sparks, like wheels spinning on a flipped over car, and Dean pressed his knee suggestively between Sam's legs, whispering, "Say the place you call home."

Sam slipped his hands under Dean’s shirt, long fingers sliding up Dean’s warm back, and he curled his face into the crook of Dean’s neck. Rocking his hips up slowly, he traced the shapes of Dean’s shoulder blades and said the same word against Dean’s skin, slower, deeper, the shape of it taking on a familiar taste in his mouth.

Light filled the room. Tires squealed in the parking lot. Their shirts rode up and fell away. Dean barely, barely heard Sam say "get the hinges", but from the wrong end of the room.

Dean rolled over with Sam on top, mouths sealed together. "Now," he said, "Think the word that always brings you back to me."

Sam kissed him, shaking now from the expulsion of energy and the sweetness of the moment. He felt light and insubstantial, the slinking power in him buried deep, the cold in his body forgotten. He thought of the word for Dean, but it needed more. Found the harsh word for possession, polished it and slid it in within the syllables of Dean’s name. The word was multilayered; you’re mine, my brother, my partner, my home, and I’m yours. It exploded in his head, all white light and heat like a lightbulb bursting, and he nearly sobbed against Dean’s shoulder as all the dark power and alien words left him, his body and mind his own again.

“Dean,” he said, pressing his cheek against his brother’s and twining their fingers together, raising Dean’s hands above his head and stretching his long body over him.

Part 8