Chapter 1: Honesty, Thy Name is Winchester
Half obscured by a misty cloud of vapor, a full moon hangs in the night's sky; a drizzle of rain pours down from below it and further below that is the Impala prowling between otherwise quiet clusters of suburban homes. On that winding stretch of road between so many clone-like houses, the glow of the streetlight reflects off the wet tarmac, highlighting the painted orange line running down the middle. It's a nicely kept, well-to-do type of neighborhood with manicured lawns and double garages and Sam feels like he and his brother just don't belong.
They don't. However, the hunt has brought them to Corchett, Idaho and the house they're supposed to be 'renting' is just a few streets over. This whole staying in an actual house part is new, yes, but then again running low on funds always makes a person start thinking outside the box. Thankfully, Gabe (Dean's realtor friend he once saved from a ghoul - who now sort of sees Dean as a God) was able to get them into an unoccupied (fully furnished) unit for the duration of their stay. However long that is Dean had told both Gabe and Sam. Dean had also said much more enthusiastically to his brother, after switching off his cell, "Dude, look at it like a mini vacation, minus the dead bodies we're gonna be prodding and the whatever the hell it is we're supposed to be looking for."
So here they are. The Winchesters on (mock)vacation. Sam flicks his gaze from Dean's rugged profile to the view outside his rain speckled window. The right side of his jaw clenches and it's not just because they still have no idea what's leaving bodies in homes without smashed windows or picked locks to mark entry or a single mark on the corpse to tell them how Mr./Mrs. Victim ended up dying in the first place.
Needing a break from staring at puddled pavement, Dean flicks eyes to his brother and his own jaw mimics Sam's. Hands in his pockets, legs sprawled, shoulder to the door and head tilted to cold glass, Sam looks angry or sullen or a damn mixture of the two. Dean's not sure which. What he is sure of is that he wants to know what's been eating at the huge bastard for the past few weeks, but Dean knows better than to pry. He's tired of getting the whole irritable "I'm fine" spiel. So, Dean goes back to staring at the road, but not without flipping on the music, low and easy, to fill the silence. After all, he knows Sam has all kinds of things to work through including his time being a soulless douche and doing time in the cage. Dean doesn't like thinking about Sam's tour down under. He knows his own treatment must have palled in comparison and that right there is enough to tell him that there's not a goddamn thing he can do to fix it, because, after so many years being topside himself, he's still not anything close to being normal.
Normal. Dean hates that word. Always has. Unbeknownst to him, Sam is sitting spaces away desperately trying to be that very definition.
[-++-]
It's 2:30 am and Sam wakes with tears spilling down his face, bile in the back of his throat, and the word "mom" trembling on his lips. The bed he's in (he has his own room, thankfully) is soaked with sweat right down to the mattress. The sheets are a wet tangle around his boxer clad form, his hair is sticking to his face, and the last vision he was forced to see is still burning bright, like the sun, in the forefront of his mind's eye. This time it was his mother being raped before being roasted alive, but it's always the screaming while all he can do is just sit there that really fucks with Sam the most. Lucifer always had him strapped to that goddamned chair the sick bastard liked to call Sam's rightful throne. That fucking chair. Unbreakable wood and razor sharp barbed wire, restraints that cut as deep as the shit he was forced to see. All lies and hallucinations, Sam knew, but it felt so goddamn real when he was all front row and center. Satan loved calling him weak, but he loved showing Sam just how true his words really rung the most. Using Mom, Dad, Jess, Bobby, old university friends, first girlfriend, that old dog he used to give food to, that cat that kept following him from the convenience store in Utah when he was ten, and-
Sam digs the heel of his palms into his eyes and fights back the lurch in his clenched guts that's trying it's damndest to coil up to his chest. That's the thing about being trapped with someone who's been following your every move since birth. They know how to get in your head, fuck with your heart, and reduce you to a pile of whimpering jelly just begging for the bittersweet release of death. Sam will give the Devil one thing. Bastard has imagination, because the shit that was done to him and to the others he created just for his entertainment... There's not a word to describe how creative that bastard got and he loved, fucking loved using-
A knock on the door makes Sam look up. The hesitant and graveled "Hey ... you ok?" from the other side makes his guts twist like living snakes.
"Y-Yeah," Sam shivers out, feeling off-kilter, sick, and so fucking weak but that ingrained defiance in him rears its ugly head and he's back to his old standby in a snap. "I'm-"
"Fine," Dean finishes for him, angry. Then the door opens and, in the darkness, Sam's brother is standing at the end of his bed. Above a pair of red and black pajama bottoms that hang low on his waist and nothing else, the look on Dean's sleep-muddled face is like the snarl of a tiger. "You're not fine, you frigging asshat. You're anything but."
Warm brotherly concern behind a thick veil of anger. This is Dean. The real Dean. Sam knows it and he both loves and hates his brother for it. Even railing against the feeling of being a little kid being scolded, Sam's too emotionally unstable to fight it all back. "M'fine! I just-"
Too raw, Sam doesn't get any further. He doesn't know just when Dean ends up beside him, arm thrown over his heaving shoulders, warm and truly solid, but he's there all "S' gonna be ok. We'll get through this. Always do." They're reassuring words and Sam knows Dean means them, but he also knows they're hollow. They are, because Sam isn't just mentally scarred from his time in the cage. Even having all his pieces, the glue that holds him together is black and utterly poisonous.
In the beginning, when he first took that dive, Sam was so ready to use thoughts of the one thing he was so sure would keep him something close to sane and it's right here beside him. However, Lucifer knows all and was quick to use that against him as well. In the cage, he turned Dean's deep brotherly affection into something dark and sinister and Sam wishes he can say he held on, that he lost the battle but won the war, but he can't. Sadly, the only reprieve from the pain he could find was melting against a fake version of his brother, no matter how violent. No, in the end, it didn't take long for the devil to make him want things he never should.
"Not this time," Sam chokes out and pushes away. "You don't know what I- You don't understand."
"Then make me," Dean growls back, angry at Sam, at himself, at the devil that reduced his brick house of a brother to this weeping little kid. Softening, Dean offers the one thing he can. His ear. Desperate times call for desperate measures and this... Dean can't handle this anymore. "Might help if you talk about it."
Shock and awe is what Sam feels and it shows on his red and ruddy face, under the damp tangle of hair that he keeps trying to smooth back. "Seriously? Mr. lock-it-all-up-and-throw-away-the-key?"
"I'm your brother," Dean replies, feelings more than a little stung. "You're hurting and it's killing me to see you all messed up like this. So, fuck it. If I gotta go all Dear Abby on you, then so be it. Contrary to popular belief, I do know how to listen. Besides, I did my time. Might understand if you try me." After a long moment more of Sam staring at the space between them, like he's wagging his own inner war over the subject, Dean prods again. "Try me."
For once in their lives, Dean is offering to sit there with his mouth shut and just listen and, right now, Sam feels like anything is better than holding all this shit in. Honestly, he doesn't know how Dean does it. So, after a breath so deep his lungs ache, he starts and once the ball gets rolling there's no stopping it.
[-++-]
Dean's sitting there, features pinched, water in his eyes, tear tracks down his face. He swipes at his stubbly cheeks again for what feels like the millionth time. His brother is sitting with his back against the headboard, legs drawn up to his bare chest, arms wrapped around his knees. Sam won't look at him. Instead, he's burning a hole through the spot in the mattress by his feet with this pained, yet resolved expression, like he's terrified of Dean's reaction but stubbornly bracing for it anyway. Having kept his promise, Dean hasn't said a damn thing, just listened, listened to every painful word that ripped a bloody chunk out of his gut one horrible sentence at time. But Sam's gone quiet now and Dean knows he needs to say something. God, all the shit Lucifer did to him, made him do, made him watch...
"And he'd-he could twist things, make me think I was-But I wasn't, you know? I was still stuck down there and you were-But he'd make think, make see things that looked so damn real. And when you'd talk to me, it was like it was you, the real flesh and blood you until... But even then, you'd still talk to me like I was-And you'd call me Sammy and I'd..."
Sam's words still ring loud in his ears and after a scrub of a hand over his mouth to help settle his own nerves, Dean finally croaks out a response.
"It's not your fault."
Sam doesn't look up, but he speaks. "Yes, it is," he insists, self-hatred coating his every word. "I'm the one that gave in. And I gave in to ... to that. Do you know how disgusting that is? That I enjoyed it? That I wanted it? That it was the only part being down there that made me feel something besides wanting to fucking finally end it all even though I knew I couldn't? And worst part? The part that is even worse than all the shit he did to me? ...Dude, I can't. I can't. I just can't."
Sam stops but Dean, against all his better judgment prompts, "What?" After a lingering moment, he urges, "Come on, Sam. This is no holds bar sharing time, remember? You got something to say, say it." Even though he's not so sure, he urges, "I can take it."
Sam finally looks up. And, after hearing his next few words, Dean's not sure if it was just to see the shock on his face. "Sometimes when I look at you, even knowing I'm really here and that's really you sitting over there, sometimes I ... sometimes I see you and I remember and I want."
Sam looks away, ashamed, and Dean is sitting there raging at Lucifer, hurting for Sam, and feeling all kinds of things that makes him want to punch something - anything - to help stem the flow of emotions that wants to burst forth from his chest like some living creature. After a while, Sam can't take it anymore.
"Dude, say something," he half whispers. "Silence is killing me."
Dean takes a ragged breath, looks up at the ceiling, and suddenly knows what he has to say. Up so late, enclosed in that dimly lit room, feeling like they're the only two people in the world right now, Dean decides its time to reveal an ugly truth that just might do more good than harm right now. So, he lowers his gaze, picks a spot on the wall, farthest away from Sam sitting on that bed, and he pushes past the lump in his throat; the words feel like they'll leave him all ragged and bloody, but he gets them out anyway. For Sam.
"When I was in Hell," he begins, after a swallow. "like I said, I spent time on the rack and when I got off..." There's that burn behind his eyes. "Even before Crowley's system, it was like Corporate America down there. See, Alistair had an incentive program and I ... I was damn good at my job."
"But rewards in hell are never that," Dean explains, sinking back into his chair, eyes taking on a far off gaze. "Man, they're poisonous, double-edged swords. Knew it wasn't you. Frigging knew, but they always looked like you, talked like you, smiled with those same fucking dimples, had the same floppy hair and I just... I missed you so frigging much and, fuck, I thought I'd never see you again, you know? So when they'd lock me in that room with-with not-you and said "five minutes," I'd spend them all just hugging you so fucking hard I was sure we'd both break."
Dean's eyes slide to the floor and shame eats away at him like a cancer. "That's how-That's how it started, anyway. And, God, Sam, I wish I could say that's how it ended, but it's not. ...It's not. I mean, I was frigging hugging a demon after all and they just-Demons never let shit go, you know?"
"You have to understand, Sam. You have to. Down there? Nothing but pain and agony and frigging humiliation. So when-So when you're being offered something different, no matter how fucked up, you just-you just take it and I- ...I took it. Didn't want to at first. I mean, who would? Sick shit, you know? Railed against it so fucking hard. But just like when I was on the rack, dude, I couldn't-I couldn't help it. ...Frigging gave in."
Dean's haunted, deadened eyes once more take on the shine of the living as he drags his gaze to his brother and fervently says, "So stop sitting there with that damn look on your face. I understand. And this is me telling you that it wasn't your fault. Frigging survival instinct kicked in. That's all. And this residual shit your still feeling about-about you and fake-me? Just gotta remember, man. That's not us. That's not how we roll. ...Once you do that, things get easier."
[-++-]
Sam's at the local park, sitting on a bench somewhere doing research. He had said some line about it being a nice day and needing the fresh air and all that but Dean knows it's because the guy needs some space. Truthfully, they both do right now. Sam's frank words had left Dean with all kinds of thinking to do.
"What now?" he asks the shot of whiskey in his hand as he sits at the counter of Momma Jo's bar a few towns over.
Dean downs the amber brew and quickly orders himself another. He scrubs a hand over his face before pouring it down his throat so fast he hardly feels the burn.
"Something eating at you too?" the guy behind the bar says, rag in hand wiping at a glass. With a nod at the patron at the end of the bar all but passing out over his drink, the bartender adds, "Just got fired from his job. Poor sap has a wife and a new baby to feed."
"Wish it was something like that," Deans replies and then orders himself a beer to go with another shot of liquor.
"Well, whatever is," the older man says with a smirk. "just remember things could always be worse."
"Yeah," Dean mock laughs with a raise of his drink in salute, but he's not laughing inside.
"Anyway, you hear 'bout them murders over there in Corchett? Telling you, man, criminals are upping their game these days. Cops don't know what to think."
And just like that, Dean's mind is back on the case and he's suddenly thankful this guy seems to love the sound of his own voice.