Disclaimer: I do not own.
A/N: Lot's wife has fascinated me for a while. How exactly that turned into this story I couldn't tell you if you paid me. Meh.
Warning: Wincest, folks, wincest. And quite a few places where you'll scratch your head and wonder what I was smoking. So it goes.
.
look not behind thee
.
Sam has read the bible. In their profession, it's kinda inevitable. It's like the handbook of what goes bump out there, all the vices and monsters, demons and horsemen laid out real pretty. He doesn't believe in all of it, mind you, but enough.
Seeing the shit they've seen, in kinda makes you a believer. (Unless you're Dean, then it just makes you harder, colder, wilder.)
But there's one thing, one story, that he never figured out. It's the fall of Sodom and Gomorrah. Lot. The angels, the mob, the daughters. He gets all that. It's fine. Cultural differences, stuff like that. Sam is smart enough even at fourteen to understand that.
What he doesn't get it Lot's wife.
.
Sam walks into the bar at Dean's back (where he kinda belongs), looking around.
All the exits, the voice that sounds like Dad whispers in his ear. All the dangers. Then you sit down, son. This place is the kind of place where you go to get the shit beat out of you and left on the street to die. Every single patron in this place looks like they've got a kill to their name and Sam ain't talking monster kills here.
And Dean struts in like he owns the place and that's just… Dean.
He orders himself a beer, fingers wrapped around Sam's wrist like a name bracelet. This is Sam. If found, please return to Dean. He gets a coke for his baby brother and Sam rolls his eyes but lets it go because he knows he's not here to get drunk. Neither is Dean.
Dean is here to bleed.
He's here because Dad's two weeks late and no word. He's here because they're out of money and because he found the application letter Sam sent out today and because sometimes Dean just boils over and all his insides spill into the world, dressed in fists and blood and rage.
And tonight, well, there's no monster to beat on.
Sam figures it's better than going out and becoming a serial killer, but really, he fucking hates this. He does. Because Dean is gonna start a fight and he's gonna get bloody and broken and he's still gonna smile that razor smile because those people might be badass but Dean, all of twenty-one and pretty-faced, is so much more dangerous. And Sam's gonna let him do it, is gonna sit back and watch his brother get beat to shit because sometimes Dean explodes and he can't fix it.
He can't fix Dean.
.
"Colorado?" Sam asks, diligently staring at the newspapers spread out on the table in front of him. (It makes him look very busy, when, in fact, he's just doing everything in his power to not have to watch Dean stuff his face like it's his last meal on Earth.)
Dean grunts and Sam repeats, "Colorado. Woman jumped out of the fifteenth floor and survived."
Another grunt. It means, nah, nothing there. Find something else.
Sam shrugs. Alright. How about, "Michigan?"
"Dude." That's a three day drive, isn't there anything closer?
"Guy found half eaten in the woods."
"Hunting season."
"Ohio."
"Corn." God, please, not Ohio. Anywhere but Ohio.
"Looks like a poltergeist." Don't be a dick.
Another grunt and a smile full of beacon. I'm gonna be as big a dick as I wanna, Sammy, my man. Sam gags and Dean suddenly picks up a clipping from the middle of the table, throwing it at Sam.
"This one?"
"Dude, Florida isn't any closer than Michigan." We don't have time. What about Dad? We gotta find him. Please, come on, I need, can you?
"Fucking Ohio it is." Yes, okay, for you, alright, relax.
Dean swallows the last of his toast and starts pushing clippings into a messy stack with his greasy fork. Raised in a fucking barn, that one. Sam smacks at his hand and he grins widely. Breathe, Sammy, just breathe.
"Yeah," Sam says.
.
When Sam is twelve, Dean's girlfriend tries to set him on fire. She's a high strung bitch at the best of times but when Dean tries to break up with her three days before Homecoming, she gets fucking volatile.
Sam's in his room when it happens and he just rolls his eyes when she starts screeching because the bitch (he doesn't even bother learning their names anymore, not since Dean hit puberty and started having more girlfriends than he has hair, or something like that. They're all either 'her', when Sam likes them or 'bitch' when he doesn't. It tends to be the latter, usually.), the bitch is always screaming about something.
Then things start flying (and landing hard) and finally there's a loud crash that sounds like something breakable smashing into the TV. Uh-oh. Dean was all nice and cajoling until now. He always is with his girls. He lets them bitch about the dumps they live in, his habits, his grammar, his lack of money, his clothes.
But you don't fuck with my brother, my weapons, my car, or my source of entertainment (i.e. the goddamn TV).
Sam drops his book like hot coals and shoots out there because Dean doesn't hit chicks, generally, but for this one he might make an exception. He finds Dean in the middle of the room, arms spread, shouting, "What the fuck, you bitch!"
And the bitch shouts right back, "You sleazy, white trash trailer park reject! I will fucking end you!"
She grabs an empty glass from the counter of the small kitchenette to her left and throws it. Dean ducks and Sam ducks, too, because he's standing behind him. Bitch can aim. By the time Sam comes back up she's fumbling for the next best thing to throw and finds Dean's Zippo. She looks down at it for a moment, fury and satisfaction twisting her features and then, instead of throwing it, she flicks it open, lights it and then throws it.
The next thing Sam knows, Dean is on fucking fire. Drop and roll, Dad whispers in his ear, drop and roll, Sammy.
The bitch screams one last, "Fuck you!" and runs for the door, leaving Dean to drop and roll and Sam to sprint for the worn sofa, ripping the tired quilt off the back and throwing it over his brother. They tumble around the ground for a panicked minute, batting at Dean's jeans because that's where the fire caught. The smell of burning cotton and wool and maybe some skin and hair fills the small room, combining with sweat and spilled beer and singed wires from the TV and fuck, that bitch set Dean on fire.
Then they stop, Dean on his back, Sam lying on top of him, bunched up and still smoking quilt squished between them. They stare at each other in utter silence until the sound of someone tearing out of the street on screeching tires reaches their ears and suddenly they laugh.
They laugh and laugh and laugh and Dean throws his head back, eyes bright and wet behind his lashes, from smoke and amusement and Sam can feel his whole body shake with the force of his brother's hilarity.
"Dude," Sam gasps when he can breathe again, wiping tears out of his eyes. "She set you on fire."
Dean snorts and wraps an arm around Sam's waist, hitching him up on his chest until they're nose to nose. Then he looks at him very seriously and says, "No shit, man. No shit."
"You gotta pick your girlfriends better," Sam decides, meaning it. Throwing things is acceptable but setting his brother on fire ain't gonna fly. At all.
Dean sighs regretfully and nods. "She gave fantastic head, though."
Sam squeaks, voice breaking on the sound (damn puberty to hell) and hits him on the chest. Hard.
Dean just starts laughing again.
.
The first thing is that she doesn't have a name. She's only 'Lot's wife', like she doesn't matter. But she's the center and ending of the story, isn't she?
She's the one that looks back, the one that disobeys and turn to salt. A pillar. That's pretty damn symbolic, Sam understands that even as a kid. A pillar is a mark, a reminder. A raised finger of warning. He tells Dean once, about how she's the important one and Dean shrugs and says, "It's not about some chick, man. It's about the city. Firestorm, all that."
Sam shrugs as Dean ruffles his hair and walks out, subject closed for him.
Lot's wife matters, no matter what Dean says. She matters and she doesn't even get a name.
.
Sometimes Sam hates the life. Okay, that's a lie. Sam always hates the life. He hates the hours, the constant travel, the danger, the freakishness of it all.
"So, what do you do in your spare time?"
"Today? I'm gonna stuff shotgun shells with rock salt after school. You?"
"…"
"Oh, you mean in general? I hunt monsters."
Yeah. No way to bring that up in polite conversation. Or impolite conversation. Or any conversation at all. He's stuck with his family because they're the only ones who know about hunting monsters and he hunts monsters because he's stuck with his family.
There's no way out, no escape. All he gets are glimpses through people's windows. Normal. Sane. Healthy. Friendly. Peaceful. He learns all those words like people learn complicated foreign words – from a dictionary. Car. Gun. Knife. Brother. Salt. Those words have meaning for little Sammy learning his ABCs. The others don't. They never do.
So, he hates the life.
But if he had to pick one thing he hates more than all other, more than seeing his family bleeding, than killing, being a freak, it's the anonymity.
Being unknown.
Not that he wants his face splashed across the newspapers, mind you. Later, when his face is splashed across all the newspapers, he hates that, too. No, what he wants it recognition. What he wants is someone to walk up to them, just once, and say, "Thank you."
Someone to say, "You saved my life."
Usually it's all just screaming and tears and accusations. Sometimes they realize what happened, understand, and stare at their saviors in fear anyway. People never ask their names. You don't want to know what the person that's about to star in your nightmares is called. You just don't.
That's what Sam hates. That he's going to die in a ditch somewhere for the sake of mankind and the good of the world and no-one is going to remember, no-one is going to mourn, or even give a fuck. Hell, if Dean and Dad go first, and he knows they will because that's the only way anything will ever get him, then there won't even be anyone to ID his goddamn body.
He matters. And he wants to have a name.
So he goes to Stanford and signs his real name, Sam Winchester, on all his papers, spitting in the face of lay low, be careful, don't tell anyone who you are or where you're from. If you have to, lie.
He signs his name, introduces himself to Jess as Sam and thinks he matters. Thinks that he's his own man, that he owns his life.
He has a name.
Four years later he'll wish he didn't.
.
Dean spits blood and winces because his lip is busted to hell and burning, but he still stretches it in a wide grin and turns it on Sam. Then he sort of sways and falls sideways and Sam has to launch himself forward to catch his brother before he falls.
He wraps his arms around Dean's middle and gets a flinch and a small cry of pain. Ribs. Idiot busted his fucking ribs. He changes his grip, waits until Dean seems mostly steady and then gingerly eases away from him.
"You okay, man?"
Dean looks grotesque with dried blood on his face, giving his little brother a thumbs-up. "Peachy, Sammy, peachy."
Sam bites his lip, looks away, says nothing. He got lucky. Dean got fucking lucky again and one of these days, his luck is just going to run out and then what's Sam going to do, huh? What's he going to do?
Useless question. Redundant.
He knows exactly what he's going to do. Family comes first, son, you hear me. Nobody touches this family and gets away with it.
Sam's gangly, growing teenage hands don't do so well with guns right now, stuck between kiddy size and oven mittens, but they know their way around a blade like nothing else. Sam's good with a blade.
And he knows exactly what he's going to do to the fucker that will, one day, get lucky instead of Dean, the guy that's going to kick Sam's brother in the ribs one time too many, or hit him at a wrong angle, knee him in the wrong place.
He knows what he's going to do to him.
It scares him that that thought doesn't scare him.
.
Ohio is a bust. The poltergeist turns out to be a teenage kid with destructive tendencies and all they get for their troubles is almost arrested. Again.
This is seriously getting old.
Since Dean is nothing but predictable, a hunt-that-isn't means he finds the nearest watering hole, gets drunk and either picks a guy to fight or a girl to fuck. Sam knows this script, can recite it forward and backwards and probably in Latin, if he tried hard enough.
He doesn't get it. Twenty years of watching his brother work himself raw and he still doesn't get it. Dean has fire. He can see that. Blind men can see that. Firefirefire. His brother burns like no beacon ever could and Sam thinks, sometimes, that heaven and hell can probably see him, no problem.
Drop and roll.
What he doesn't get is why Dean doesn't do something with that fire. He could do, could be, just about anything. He's smart and driven and he has that itch under his skin that Sam never had but recognizes all too well. It's the kind of itch that makes people go and change the world.
But all Dean does, all he ever uses that fire for, is this. To pick up random people in bars to touch him (fists or tongue), to strip him (unbuckle his belt or rip at the collar of his shirt), to ruin him (blood and sweat, always, whether he's fighting or fucking). He has fire like no-one else Sam ever met and he uses it to find people who'll smother that fire.
The word for that is self-destructive, except Sam doesn't think a single word can encompass how screwed-up Dean really is.
But Dean will be Dean, so he sits down at the bar in Bumfuck, Ohio and orders a beer and two shots, just for warming up. Sam sinks into a booth at the back of the bar with the door and his brother in his line of sight and goes with only a beer for himself. It's too early to tell which way Dean's going to fall tonight (fist fight or tonsil hockey) and until he knows, he can't afford to be drunk.
All the exits, all the dangers.
The waitress smiles at him and sways her hips, but he's blind to her. Dean downs the first shot and spins on his barstool to find Sam, unerringly and directly. He lifts his beer in a silent salute and takes a sip, grinning from ear to ear.
The waitress crosses his line of sight and unlike his brother, Dean looks. Dean always looks. Sam grinds his teeth and fights the urge to look away. Instead he raises one eyebrow in silent mockery, asking wordlessly, what now?
Dean shrugs, taps the neck of his bottle with a single nail. Sam imagines he can hear the clicking all across the crowded room. Why do you care?
Sam draws a circle on the scarred table top with a forefinger, shrugs, too. Why shouldn't I?
Dean turns away, the way he always does at this point and downs his second shot. Then he picks his beer back up and makes his way over to the pool tables. Sam's own drink arrives and when he looks back up, Dean is leaning against the wall, bottle dangling from nimble fingers. His smile has gotten sharp and his eyes mellow. He asks the burly guys playing pool something and one of them answers, taking him in from head to toe. Punkass kid, can Sam practically hear him think, little boy.
But he looks too long and at all the wrong places, missing the glint of something dangerous in Dean's eyes, seeing instead only the shift of hips, the cant of a head. Willing and eager is what Dean throws and the guy picks it up, easy.
Sometimes, when he's feeling spiteful, Sam thinks his brother would make an awesome whore. Most of the time, though, that comes too close to a truth he doesn't want to think about and he feels ashamed. Look after your brother, Dean.
Without Sam, Dean's life would be easier.
Then the guy raises his cue, twirls it once in meaty fingers and offers it to Dean. They start a new game and Sam relaxes marginally. Only harmless games for Dean tonight. They have enough money, so he won't hustle the guy too badly. They might even get out of here without split knuckles.
.
The thing about the wife, Sam thinks, is what she does. She disobeys. She gets a clear order, from the servants of God and she still ignores it.
They tell her to get her ass moving and not look back. Should be easy enough, just walk and you live. But she stops and turns and looks.
She disobeys.
For the longest time, Sam thinks that's all there is to it and he fancies himself like her, the rebel, the disobedient child, looking back in defiance.
He runs away to Stanford and feels justified in it, feels brave. Feels that Dad doesn't need him and Dean is better off without him, pulling him down, holding him back. Without Sam to feed, Dean won't have to bleed so often.
He's wrong, oh so wrong, but he doesn't know that then.
.
Dean is a fucking mess when Sam comes back, that's what he is.
He doesn't look it, all hidden under bravado and big words, like always. Sam has never known Dean without the mouth, without the happy-go-lucky attitude. There were only moments, in between, where Dean would go silent and little Sammy would look at his brother's solemn face and know to be scared.
But when the money runs out and the nights grow longer and later, he's raw in a way he never was before. He finds seedier bars, tries to shake Sammy before he goes there. He picks fights with bigger guys, he plays pool for higher stakes, stakes guaranteed to get his teeth punched out.
Dean has always laughed danger in the face, but now he's spitting at it and stomping on its toes, too, and Sam realizes, with a sinking feeling in his gut, that it's his fault.
He left and Dean floated away, higher and higher and there was no reason for him to come down anymore.
.
It's a few weeks after Ohio that he finally snaps. Dean's trying to get a rise out of a gang of bikers, each of them outweighing him by at least fifty pounds. And what they lack in speed and dexterity they make up for in weapons and numbers.
If Dean fights those guys, he's gonna end up in hospital.
If he survives.
And Sam gets angry. He gets to fucking angry that he can practically feel his molars groaning in protest as he clenches his jaw. He stands, sweeps through the bar, for once using his height to its full advantage, and grabs his brother by the shoulder, spinning him around, fury on his face.
"What the fuck, man?" he snarls. What are you doing, do you want to die, are you crazy, can't you see…?
Dean grins, easy, and Sam notices, for the first time, that Dean looks at him the same way he looks at a mark. Sharp grin and mellow eyes, see what I want you to see, nothing else.
"You need anything, Sammy?" Go away, leave me to this, nothing here to see, don't ruin my game.
Sam wants to scream, this is not a game, goddamn, and understands, for the first time, just how broken his brother is.
.
He drags Dean out of the bar, away from the bikers and the pool table and his half-drunk beer, drags him down the street and towards their ratty motel room and he ignores how Dean complains and asks and yells, ignores how he pulls on the hold Sam has on him (never strong enough to break it and Sam knows he could, so easily).
Ignores everything until they reach the door and then he digs into Dean's jacket pocket without a word and fishes out the key, unlocks the door, shoves them both inside, slams the door closed and his brother right up against it.
He twists his hand into Dean's collar, shoves and pushes until the shorter man is standing on tip-toe, pressed against rickety wood, letting himself be helpless even as he smiles, arms wide. What, Sammy, what?
Challenging, even now.
"Fuck you!" Sam screams in his face, too close, far too close. "Fuck you and fuck your games and fuck… fuck… why do you do this, Dean?"
"Do what, Sammy?" Cocky, so cocky, this is the smile for a mark, this is the tone of voice, please hit me, make me bleed, break me down, come on, you know you want to, come on.
"Why do you…."
Bleed, fuck, fight, break, want to die, lie to me, never let me in, hide everything from me. Why do you do this to yourself?
He doesn't ask because he doesn't think Dean knows. Doesn't think anyone alive does. Maybe Mom would, if she were alive. Dad always said Dean's too much like Mom. Sam used to be jealous of that. But Mom is dead and has been for twenty years and maybe something of Dean died with her. Maybe…
He doesn't ask because he already knows.
Instead he loosens his hold, gives his brother half a second to move, fight back, escape. Dean does nothing, just looks up at Sam, eyes bright. So Sam leans in and kisses him.
It's teeth and tongue and he thinks he tastes blood, feels someone's lip give under the onslaught of pent up aggression and fear and hunger and fire and for the first time, he has that itch under his skin, too, and he understands what it's whispered in Dean's ear all his life.
Break something.
Sometimes there's only yourself to break, Sam thinks as Dean shoves at him, too hard and too harsh, tumbles him onto the bed, follows after. There are hands on Sam's belt, pulling, tearing, and Dean's breath hot and smelling of beer, on his neck and cheek. Teeth bite his ear and he arches and throbs and twists, pulls Dean under him, putting too much weight in places where it shouldn't be, making him groan.
"Fuck you," he hisses and Dean laughs, low and smoky.
"I thought that's what we're doing, Sammy."
"You gotta stop doing this shit," Sam growls, nipping on a bleeding lip, pulling it taut to the point of pain, making his point wordlessly.
Stop trying to get yourself killed.
Dean stretches up, buries one hand in Sam's hair, pulls him down and bites right back. Sam winces but doesn't withdraw, feels Dean's free hand curl around his wrist like it has so many times before.
This is Sam. If found, please return to Dean.
Sam twists out of the hold, reverses it in a move he learned when he was six. Wraps his fingers around Dean's own wrist like steel bands.
This is Dean. If found, please return to Sam.
Under him, Dean smirks and licks blood from his lip. He says, "Make me."
.
Lot's wife doesn't just disobey. It's not that simple. She doesn't look back just for the sake of looking back.
She doesn't disobey.
She defies.
It doesn't matter that she doesn't have a name, doesn't matter that people dismiss her as an unimportant part of the story. What she does isn't some great gesture. It isn't meant to change anything. There's just…there is a city burning behind her, her whole people, her home, her friends, all turning to ash and the angels order her to walk and not look back.
But she does.
She looks back and she witnesses what the angels, what God, doesn't want her to see. Everything she knows is burning and she refuses to look away.
She defies her God and looks back because it's all she can do, but she can do it. Nothing else, and she knows it will cost her everything, but she looks back. She stops. She stays. She sees.
She fire rages and she can't look away. She witnesses.
It takes a long time, but in the end, Sam understands that all too well.
.
.