Heavy amounts of "crack" in this fic. Written before season three aired, and therefore before Ruby was introduced. There are a few sequels.
There're less than a hundred days left when Sam realizes he's not going to find anything, no matter how many books he steals or borrows. He's sitting there with a book of demon lore in one hand and a pen in the other, staring at a page that's been blank since day three, and he just. He knows.
If there were a way, he would have found it by now.
Dean's laughing himself sick on the bed next to him, almost giggling as he wallows in the bedspread, six different newspapers with six different special features all littered with pictures of Paris Hilton calling for her mommy scattered in the places he isn't.
Sam wants to take that sound and bottle it up inside of him because he doesn't ever want to forget that Dean sometimes snorts when he's laughing too hard.
That's when he decides. His brother continues laughing.
"Dude, look at her face," Dean hoots gleefully, "Lookit her face!"
Sam dutifully looks at the newspaper, for the fifth time, notes that, yeah, okay, she doesn't really look like the creepy ass starlet she is, she looks human and he feels a little sorry for her. Then he rolls his eyes at Dean and tells him to look for a case, not Paris Hilton's jail scandal.
Dean airily waves a hand at him, still snorting under his breath, and Sam has the new, slightly baffling urge to shove him inside iron lines for the rest of his life. He's not used to being the protector, not used to wanting to bury his brother behind charms and wards and anything he can think of to keep his stupid head from screwing him over again, and he's glad Dean's turned back to his newspapers, because his smile is slipping.
Books aren't going to help him. Hunters can't help him either, and he thinks that that just leaves one thing that can.
Dean would tell him not to. Actually, Dean would probably say something along the lines of, "Are you fucking insane, Sammy?! Jesus Christ," and then spend a good five minutes rubbing the back of his head and scowling. And when Sam tried to do it anyway, because it was the only way, Dean would be there every minute of the day, standing outside the shower curtain, whistling Dixie under his breath while Sam tries to piss and making it impossible to try to do what he needed to do.
Which is exactly why he doesn't tell Dean.
He starts practicing days later, in the shower until Dean bangs on the door and asks if he's going to be whacking off in there all day, during long nights of staring at the ceiling while his brother snores on the bed next to him.
The first few weeks all he gets is a headache that feels like static. He knows there's something hidden under the white noise because he'll hear it sometimes, when the headache gets bad enough that he vomits; a sibilant hiss of Latin or little girl laughter, shrieking and high and wrong. If he were talking to Dean about it, he'd swear that he's heard his name more than once under it all, Sam and Samuel and Sammy.
But he's not talking to Dean about anything but the next hunt and, God help them, Paris Hilton's jail time, and most of their conversations go something like this:
"Pass the ketchup, dude."
"What, your gorilla arms can't reach? What are you gonna do when I'm gone?"
"It's a joke, Sammy," Dean'll say a second later, when Sam's done choking on his soda, "A joke. Lighten up, man, I'm not going anywhere." The yet is usually silent, unless he's pissed Dean off by hovering, and then it's a pointed, "I'm not dead yet, dude. Back the fuck off," followed by a few minutes of awkward silence before Dean starts checking out the nearest waitress and Sam concentrates and hears static in the back of his head.
The whispers get clearer the more he tries, until on day three hundred and thirty-one he hears, "samuel sam sammy our sam lead us where do we go what do we do who do we kill sam sam sam samsamsamuelsamsammy..."
The thing about it is that he's not really trying to tune into them when they suddenly come flooding across his head, he's trying to waste a poltergeist before it slices Dean open. He's got a second of thinking, 'got you, you bastard,' and then he's down on the ground, curled around his shotgun and screaming.
It feels like there's a hundred different spiders skittering across his mind, two hundred, all leaving behind little messages and pleas, all asking for more blood and less waiting. He's gagging on it all, clawing at the floor and his head, and then a voice clears through it all and tells him to (duck, sam).
He tucks his head to the ground, automatic reaction even though that isn't Dean. The poltergeist whips past him and then comes around again before he can make himself sit up.
There's a rumble of thunder that shakes the entire house and the voice urges him to (get up, move, if you die we die, won't go back to hell, get up samuel) just as his head clears. Demon black smoke is hovering over him, tangling in the blurred lines of the ghost, keeping it from moving, and Dean's blinking like he's half-blind and bleeding from a head wound.
Sam focuses on that, because he can't, won't, focus on the fact that there's a demon wrapped around a poltergeist. The demon whispers again, shares ways to dismantle a ghost without rock salt and iron and Sam gags. He pulls up his shotgun and fires at the entire convoluted mass of ghost and demon and hopes he got both of them even as the demon mocks (salt, no, no, only blood, your blood, nothing else, nothing else) him for it.
The demon's moving towards Dean before the report from the shotgun fades and Dean just blinks very slowly at it and twitches his fingers. The demon (furfur, i am furfur, do not forget it) stretches out black tendrils towards his brother and Sam's whipping out a hand before he even thinks about, telling it to stop. He's got a terrifying minute of thinking that it's just going to keep going, bury itself in Dean while Dean can't fight back, and then it hisses and pulls itself away.
There's a general cacophony in his head (don't need him, don't want him, keeps you from us, die die die) and then it all goes back to static.
The sky outside is blue and brilliant and Sam squints at it and tries to ignore the fact that Dean is groggily muttering about guns under his breath.
Dean's bleeding because of him, and Sam wants to laugh at the thought that this was supposed to be his way of helping almost as much as he wants to throw up.
They don't ever really shut up after that.
Sam patches Dean's head up, ignores the way Dean's eyeing him suspiciously even through the concussion, and tries not to let himself drown under the voices of more than a hundred demons doing evil. There's a little girl in Indiana who ends up strung up by her mother (laugh, laugh, laugh, you won't tell us what to do, do it ourselves, sammy sammy sam) and a man in Nevada who claims demons made him kill his family (demons, just one of us, just one, doesn't need more than one of us to kill, samuel, tell us what to do), an entire plague of death and demons that are whispering their way through his head.
Dean's just fallen asleep after being woken up on the hour and Sam lies back on his bed and hates himself. He rolls over onto his side, hears (sammy sam sam do you need us, do you) and shivers. He needs answers.
"Which one of you'll tell the truth?" he asks aloud, in his head, in his bones, and the demons all shriek (me, me, me, I'll tell, I'll tell) before they fall silent under the weight of a single voice (agares, agares will answer for you, general, leader, sam, agares speaks truth).
Agares. Sam picks through the information in his head, finds the entry written off under "bullcrap" and pulls up a wisp of a memory that says Agares is the benevolent ruler of eastern Hell. That'll do, he decides. "Agares?"
There's demon smoke suddenly, coalescing in the space between his bed and Dean's. The demon makes a noise like sandpaper on skin and asks (how can i serve, how may i help, may i kill may i kill, don't need this one, may i kill).
It drifts absently towards where Dean's mouth is open on some pretty fearsome snores, and Sam sits up so fast the room spins. "You touch him and I'll--"
(don't touch the brother, the brother, don't touch, as you wish) the demon responds, runs cool smoke across Sam's forehead that eases the headache that's been plaguing him for days. Sam feels so sick to his stomach he wants to scream. (take care of yourself, sammysamsamuel, take care, we need you, take care) Agares whispers, (lead us, our general, ours, your army we are, we are, lead us)
Sam starts to ask what the hell the thing's babbling about when it hits him. "What I need, is a leader," the Yellow-Eyed demon had said, and, "Oh, I've already got my army." A hundred, two hundred, he'd told Dean, trying to think of anything but the fact that his brother was going to die for him, an army. An army without a leader, he'd thought and hadn't said, Jake's dead, I killed him, they've got no leader.
(you'll lead us, you, blood of our blood, samsammy, you'll lead)
"How?" he finally asks, instead of why. He knows why. He's the last, the only one still standing, and he. He's been calling them.
(demon blood) the demon says, tugging gently at his hair while Sam fights to keep from grabbing the nearest bottle of holy water, (demon blood keeps us here, take care, take care, only one general, only one with demon blood now, you die, we go back to hell, don't die, take care sammy).
Sam wants to start laughing, he really does, but instead he rolls over to look at Dean's sleeping face. There's a couple hundred demons out there, marauding, and the quickest way to get rid of them all would be to kill him. There's something poetic in that.
"Stop killing," he says, because he can't force himself to reach out and pick up his gun; Dean would kill him. Dean would hunt him down and kill him and then bitch for the rest of eternity about it, "Stop killing people or I'll get rid of myself."
(yes sam, yes, anything you say, no more killing, no more killing, no maiming, no killing, alright) Agares whisper speaks, and is gone.
Day three hundred and sixty four is the day that Bobby calls and talks to Dean for over an hour before Dean gives him the phone. There's no apology in his brother's eyes while he listens to Bobby tell him that he's found nothing, that there isn't a way out of a demon deal like Dean's made.
Dean's not going to apologize for it, but he offers to get dinner by himself and Sam knows it's going to be Lucky Charms and sushi and chocolate chip cookies. And he knows that it's going to be left out on the doormat while Dean bolts somewhere so that he doesn't have to watch him die.
Sam wants to let himself memorize the way Dean's shoulders are pulled back with quiet pride, the way he swaggers and grins as he walks towards death. He wants to. But he's not going to fucking fail with this and he doesn't need to. He doesn't.
As soon as Dean's out the door Sam's summoning the demons. The headache hits like a sledgehammer, nausea follows soon after, but the whispery static in the back of his head abruptly spins to a station he can pick up and the demons are there, suddenly, all around him.
The demons (your army, yours, please ask us to do, lead us, samuel, one who sees) ask what he wants them to kill; he gives them the image of red eyes and a crossroads and they laugh. They whisper to him, ask for a (succulent, tender, easy to break, yes please) human in exchange for killing their own and he just reaches out for the nearest knife and hovers it over his wrist.
(wouldn't, wouldn't, would you sam, live for your brother, live for him, wouldn't die) they scratch out on his mind and Sam feels one side of his face pull up in a silent snarl as he shouts back (dean dies, i die, you die) until they scream their agreement (samsammysamuel don't, don't kill you, don't don't, no hell, no, yes, yes, yes, time to kill) and rush away.
It feels like it's been hours, so he shouldn't really be surprised that it's been thirty minutes and there's suddenly the sound of a shotgun going off. The demons hiss their displeasure at that (salt, salt, tries to hurt us with salt, kill him, kill him) and a feeling of menace curls through the room.
Sam opens his eyes to Dean's furious face, because of course Dean chooses now to contradict his brother's expectations. "What did you do?" Dean demands as soon as he meets his eyes. Sam opens his mouth, tries to get something out before he pukes, and instead gets stuck on the fact that Dean's eyes have shifted to stare behind him. "Sam. Oh, fuck, Sammy, what did you do?"
There are demons behind him, Sam knows, his demons, and that thought is what pushes his stomach over the edge. He's on his knees and heaving, dully aware that he's managed to miss Dean's boots by a couple of inches, but more hypersensitive to the fact that while he can feel Dean's hand on his back, he can also feel half a dozen demons reaching inside him to soothe his guts.
The shotgun goes off again and the demons pull back with a displeased yowl across his brain (won't let us fix it, humans are frail, death can come from this, frail, frail, frail sammy).
"Shut up," he manages to say between heaves, and the demons do.
Dean's got one hand palming his shoulder blade when he comes back up for air, the other still clutching the shotgun as he eyes the whispering, shifting mass of demons. "Sam? Start talking."
In the end, there's not much to talk about, Sam finds. Dean's pissed, beyond pissed, because he knows. Sam'd told him about Ava's powers and the demons aren't hurting either one of them. Dean's not stupid enough to ignore what that means.
"I wasn't going to let you die, Dean," he tells his brother, softly, and closes his eyes.
"So, what? You decided it'd be a freakin' awesome idea to sell yourself to some demons instead?!"
Yeah, it kind of looked like that. Sam knows he's turning green again, the reminder of the demons blending in with the smell of vomit and the taste of his mouth and Dean's cursing and hauling him towards the bathroom as he tries to keep from hurling.
The demons follow. Sam's not really surprised about that. He gets a double earful while he's bent over the toilet, Dean ranting at him about what he's done and the demons whispering (don't die, choke on vomit, nasty way to go, nasty, nasty).
They're on the road, have been for hours, Dean flooring it like he's trying to outrun every supernatural thing from here to Alaska, when another demon squeezes into the Sam's cracked window. It flickers easily out of sight when Dean casts a glance at the sudden increased breeze, but Sam knows it's there, can feel it pulse with brand new satisfaction.
(flauros has obeyed, burned, burned to ash, death and death and death, sammysamuelsam did i do good) the demon skitters, (dead is red eyes, dead is she of the crossroads, bastard troublemaker brother is safe, sammy is safe, did good, did good, no death for sam, no death).
Yeah, Sam breathes in his mind, did good.
Sam starts to suspect that maybe Dean's plan is to run until the demons stop following when they've spent a solid twenty hours on the road, pointed towards the Dakotas. Which is just stupid, because he can seen about thirteen of them in the backseat of the Impala alone and there's Flauros still tucked up underneath his feet, and another one keeping pace with the Impala from the outside (wind, wind, cold wind, no wind in hell, cold cold, hypothermia to a human, peel them like a grape).
He doesn't know when he suddenly became mostly okay with this, but he is. He thinks that might be the demons trolling around where they have no business being and tells them to fucking stop it before he opens his mouth and says, "You know, Dean, we can't outrun them."
(stupid to try, stupid, so stupid) one of the demons agrees, shifts a little and scratches a part of Sam's mind that feels like it's on fire, (zaebos is watching you now)
Dean's quiet for long enough that Sam thinks they're going to pretend he hasn't spoken.
"Who says we're runnin'?" A muscle in Dean's jaw jumps as he flexes his hands and the silver ring on his finger reflects the almost invisible blackness of a demon (zaebos) watching out for them (cars crash, hurtling metal, no, no, no death for the general) from the vents. Sam thinks that Dean doesn't know it's there, and he'd rather keep it that way. "We're not running; we're getting our asses to Bobby's so that we can catch all of these bastards and send them back to hell."
"You can't just send them back to Hell, man." Sam wants to gouge his brain out to stop the sudden twittering that comment brings on, because of course a bunch of demons have nothing better to do than listen in on his conversations. "They're the strongest demons Hell's got to offer, and the devil's trap couldn't even hold Meg long enough for an exorcism. No way is it going to hold them.
"Anyway, the demons. They. They're mine, Dean. They're the army."
The Impala speeds up for a minute, past the hundred mark and then back down before Dean lifts off the gas and tilts his face to look at him. "Yours," Dean repeats flatly, "Yours? No, Sammy, they belong to that Yellow-Eyed son-of-a-bitch that I put a bullet through. They sure as fuck don't belong to you."
Sam leans his head against the window and tells Dean that they only way to get rid of them is for him to die. And then he tells the tightened eyes that the reason they're stuck to him is because the Demon poured demon blood down his throat when he was a baby.
He leaves out the fact that Mom had known the Demon was coming; they don't need to deal with that now.
Dean's dead silent after, pissed to the point of white-faced quiet as he grips the Impala's steering wheel hard enough for it to creak.
Sam gets that, he does. But he lets the coolness of the window ease his headache and thinks that anything's worth Dean being alive. Even listening to a bunch of demons mourn how sentimental and weak he is.
Sam's sprawled out on his back days later, pressing the heels of his palms to his eyes in a vain attempt to get the demons to stop chittering on about this virgin and that priest. It's a losing battle and he kind of suspects that before too long he'll go crazy with them mumbling in the back of his brain all the time.
Dean likes to tell him it's a short drive. Sam's not really sure he's wrong.
So, he's got 178 demons spread out over the continent, every single one of them skipping happily through cities and towns sowing discord but no actual murder (spoilsport, Sammy, you're a spoilsport, just a little bit of death, what'll it hurt, please, please, please).
He's got an army at his back that doesn't actually want to help him with anything, but will because they have to, and he's got a brother that thinks he's maybe a few fries short of a happy meal. But Dean is, Dean's alive, and Dean's willing to forgive damn near anything as long as Sam's still alive too, and he figures that in the long run, the demons'll be useful.
Maybe.
One of the demons catches that thought, holds it in the middle of his mind like it's a balloon; Zaebos laughs long and hard at his back, brushes his (almost, not quite, won't let us manifest all the way, why sammy, why, we want to kill, to hunt please please let us) scales across the tender places in his head as he waves the thought around for the others to see.
There's a maddening hiss of laughter (sam, sam, we won't let you die, don't want to go back to hell, we won't go again, no, no, no, lead us, such a silly little meatpuppet) before they all fade back into whatever it is they're doing when they are far, far away from him. No killing, they chant softly, no killing and no maiming and no fun, and he smiles and opens his eyes.
Dean's watching him from the other bed, mouth pinched and unhappy, but all he says is, "You look like your puppy's just pissed in your shoes."
Sam closes his eyes again and smiles. "They're laughing at me," he says softly. When he can feel Dean's eyebrows raising, he grins harder and adds, "Mostly, though, they're just pissed."
"So, it's a good kind of bad puppy then?" Dean asks. "I mean, if their pissed they can't be. They're not. It's a good." He stops and scrunches his eyebrows together before scrubbing a hand against the back of his head and sighing noisily, "You know what, nevermind."
If they're pissed, they can't be doing everything a demon wants to do; I don't have to even think about what it means that I can't get rid of them without hurting you. Yeah, Sam heard him, loud and clear.
"Very good." There's a burst of offended noise across his mind, a scratch of (puppies, we're not puppies, too fearsome, eat puppies, yum, stupid little yippy creatures, can see right through us, bad bad bad) that has him ducking his head and smiling again. He thinks he might be losing his mind a little sooner, rather than later, if he thinks eating puppies is funny.
"I can live with that." Dean sounds gruff when he says it, clears his throat right afterwards and starts rummaging in his covers.
Yeah, Sam thinks, smiles when Flauros brindles and hisses that he should (lie more often, fitting a general, don't think straight, think in circles leader, circles). It's not perfect and it's not pretty and if any other hunters ever figure it out he's going to be dead, but. In the meantime? He can live with it too.