Sooooo… here with another chapter. Don't ask why it took so long. I have no idea, it was even prewritten. This chapter is also unbetaed, so it may or may not be a pile of crap. You be the judge. Please let me know with a review!

DISCLAIMER: I own NOTHING. Except a locket with Sam and Dean's photo in it that I probably stare at way too often. Oh well. I like the disease. ;)

Then:

Sam had no idea how long they'd stayed like that. It could have been minutes but it felt like hours. He only knew that it felt like the most comfortable thing he'd ever felt in his life.

After a while, Dean had suggested he take a shower, and he'd agreed. He smelt of sweat and sleep and… sex and lest he not forget every time he shifted, he felt a tiny bit of Dean's cum in his ass.

As he showered Sam wondered why he was suddenly being so clingy; it felt strange even to him. But Dean hadn't left; hadn't shown any disgust or hatred towards Sam because of what he'd made him do last night. Because it was Sam's fault; it was always his fault-

Dean was still here and that was all he needed.

They could deal with whatever came their way together, including the events of last night. But when Sam came out of the shower and Dean was sitting at the table in the kitchenette area of the room staring at the screen of Sam's laptop, Sam knew. He could tell by Dean's body language. Dean was shutting him out. It didn't take any words.

What Sam suspected was confirmed when without looking up Dean said two words- "Witches, man."

Sam recognized it for what it was: a dismissal.

Chapter Three- Blood:

I'm only joking
I don't believe a thing I've said
What are you smoking?
I'm just a-fucking with your head
Only a crazy little thing I read

-"I'm Only Joking" by KONGOS

Every time Sam asked about the witch the only thing Dean would say was "I took care of it." It didn't matter how many times Sam asked, the answer was always the same. Eventually he just gave up and decided to trust Dean. They left the state and headed towards a new hunt.

They carried on much like they had before. Working case after case… but that was it. No breaks in between. No stops to catch your breath. No nights at the local bar, just hanging out and eating and drinking beer. No watching the stars at night on the hood of the Impala. Fuck, they barely even talked to each other about anything but the case of the week. Absolutely nothing brotherly in nature at all. It was all business.

Well, Sam had finally gotten his wish. They truly were business partners and nothing more. Except, now that it was granted, he really really wanted to hit something.

And touching? Touching was out of the question. It wasn't even on Dean's plane of existence. Ever since that morning he'd practically sidestepped him every time Sam came within several feet. Sam had gone to touch his shoulder once, in a casual manner to let Dean know he needed to talk to him, and Dean had literally jumped back a few feet before Sam came even close to making contact. He'd acted like nothing happened, but Sam could see the subtle way Dean had clenched his jaw.

It was beginning to be a problem on hunts. Sam had been forced to throw Dean a machete because he refused to come close enough to hand it to him, resulting in a zombie getting in the way and Dean getting bitten several times trying to make his way to it. For the first time Sam was thankful Dean wasn't human. Sam didn't want to think what would happen if this behavior kept up.

It hurt. Dean had never been touchy-feely, and neither had Sam for that matter, though he'd never had the same outright aversion to touch that his brother did. But they'd always made a bit of an exception for each other. A pat on the shoulder, a grip on the wrist if one was running for their life in the wrong direction, a clinical frisk to check for injuries, sitting next to each other in the Impala for hours on end, sleeping in the same room in twin beds thisclose…

It hurt. It fucking hurt. He hadn't thought it would hurt this much, but it did. He'd never thought about how often they touched each other or how normal it was for them to be in such close proximity. The old saying, 'you don't know what you have until it's gone' came to mind.

The same question kept running around in his mind in an endless cycle: Why does it matter? Then he'd think, It doesn't matter. I'm not going to think about it anymore. I'm done. I don't care. And then Dean would refuse to even meet his eyes and he'd be right back where he started.

At the risk of sounding exactly like his brother, Sam really needed a fucking drink.

So there he was. Sitting alone at the table in their motel room with his laptop in front of him and his second beer nearly gone. They'd just finished a Vamp hunt in some town in Indiana a few hours ago and Dean was getting ready to head out to a bar before they left on yet another hunt in the morning. Sam hadn't even found a hunt yet, and Dean was insisting they leave anyway.

It was really starting to piss him off and he didn't know how much longer he could take it.

It seemed almost inevitable that when Dean stepped out of the bathroom and was about to the leave the room without even a cursory glance at Sam, he snapped.

"Dean," Sam started. He felt more than heard Dean pause with his hand still on the doorknob. "We need to talk about this sometime." He turned around in his chair to face his brother.

"Talk about what?" Dean sounded like he was gritting his teeth.

"You know what," Sam challenged.

"No, I don't know, because there is NOTHING TO FUCKING TALK ABOUT. NOTHING HAPPENED, YOU HEAR ME? NOTHING." Each word, shouted out with such venom, was punctuated with Dean tightening his grip on the doorknob until finally it snapped off and Dean, his eyes black as obsidian, was left holding this broken, useless thing-

The broken, useless thing left more than a small dent in the wall when Dean threw it across the room in frustration.

Sam could only stare in wide-eyed shock. Whatever he'd been expecting, it wasn't this. Sure, he'd expected anger, a lot of it, but for Dean to just fly off the handle like this, after only a few words? It was unsettling, to say the least.

"Dean? Dean, just calm down, okay? I know you don't want to talk about what happened-" He tried to keep his tone as nonthreatening as possible, despite his own anger threatening to get the best of him for Dean trying to get out of this talk yet again, but to no avail.

"What happened? Okay, fine. Ya got me. I know what happened, you know what happened, we all know what happened, right?" Dean threw his hands up in the air in mock exasperation. "Only thing is, I wish to God nothing had happened. That night is going to haunt me for the rest of my life, or whatever pathetic excuse is left of it. So Sam, are we done talking about it yet? Because I don't think my stomach can take any more."

It was absolutely pathetic, but with every word Dean snarled at him, Sam just… died a little more inside. Or more like, he finally realized he'd had it all wrong in the first place and this was simply what he should have been feeling the entire time.

It was all he could do to whisper out the words "Yeah. Yeah, we're done here." With every second it was becoming harder to ignore the burning sensation in his eyes. He knew he was going to break down any second, but at that moment he'd rather die than have Dean see it.

"Yeah? Good talk," Dean sneered. With that he was gone. Out of Sam's sight. Out of Sam's reach.

Out of Sam's life.

Was it his fault that he couldn't stop thinking about that night? Was it his fault that it was the last thing on his mind before he went to sleep every night, staring at his brother's outline laying in the other beed in the shadows? Was it his fault that he dreamed about it almost every night? Was it his fault that in the dark of the night, when he couldn't sleep, he thought about what it might mean? What it could lead to?

Was it all his fault?

He didn't want it to be. He hadn't wanted any of this. He'd just wanted his body to stop feeling like it was on fire. And then he had just wanted to make some kind of sense of it. And then he had wanted to understand it.

He didn't want to long for something he couldn't have. He didn't mean to.

But he did.

Is that his fault?

Wasn't everything his fault?

As Sam slid to the floor and curled up in a ball, he thought he knew the answer.

Apparently, demons can get totally shit-faced drunk.

Sure, it took nearly the entire bar and beating the ever-living shit out of the bartender, bouncers, and other patrons to get to it, but it was possible and that was all that mattered.

Dean stumbled to the door of his and Sam's motel room. When he finally made it there without falling flat on his face he rested his forehead on the cool metal of the door, trying to make the world stop spinning. He fumbled for the doorknob with one hand, just wanting to get inside as soon as possible and pass out on a nice, lumpy motel bed. When his fingertips met with a gaping hole where the knob should have been he peeked a blurry eye open. It was then that he noticed the door had been left slightly ajar. He mentally shrugged and pushed the door open; it made his job easier. If it wasn't for the fog of alcohol clouding his mind, he would have immediately been on alert- the door wasn't locked because he had broken the knob.

Swaying unsteadily on his feet, Dean made his way to the bed closest to the door. With a loud protest of the bed springs he unceremoniously belly-flopped onto the bed. Just before the blackness took over a single thought clawed its way to the surface of his inebriated mind.

"Sammmyyyy… I'm shorry… sho shorryyy…"

XxXxXxXxXxXx

Chirp chirp chirp chi-

BANG!

The blue jay resting peacefully on a tree branch directly in front of the window of one Room 23 got a rude surprise as a bullet shot through the glass, missing the bird by less than an inch.

"Shut. Up." Dean Winchester hissed from his position splayed out on his stomach on top of the bed. He grabbed his head and groaned. Something told him firing a gun in a motel room and busting a window in the process wasn't a good idea… but his fucking head was fucking throbbing and that goddamn bird made it worse.

Slowly, ever so slowly, Dean shifted until he was in a sitting position on the edge of the bed. He blinked rapidly and rubbed the sleep out of eyes. So far, even demonic hangovers were a bitch. He searched the room with blurry eyes. "Sam?" Where was his little brother? Normally when Dean came home drunk out of his mind Sam had a bucket to puke in, water to rehydrate, and Ibuprofin for the inevitable headache. When he was feeling particularly solicitous he even had a greasy breakfast waiting for him. And now… nothing.

The memories of last night came flooding back to him. Oh yeah… they hadn't exactly parted on good terms. Dean had seen Sam about to break down and he'd just left him there. One of the shittiest things he had ever done, and he'd done some pretty shitty things in his life… yeah, he definitely didn't deserve breakfast. But he just had to seek his brother out and apologize and things would go back to normal; or whatever passed for it nowadays. He didn't even know what normal was for them anymore.

"Sam? You're not giving me the silent treatment are you? Saaaaaaammm?" Dean tried again. Silence. Okay, maybe Sam had just gone out to get coffee or something. Another cursory glance of the room revealed that all of Sam's belongings were still where he'd left them- jacket thrown over the back of a chair, phone on the table, duffel next to the bed furthest from the door.

Maybe he should get off his ass and actually look around. Moving like molasses, Dean searched the room only to find out nothing more than what he'd been able to see from the bed. Long story short, his gigantor little brother was not here.

Son of a bitch. Alarm bells in his head were finally going off now. He hadn't seen any visible signs of sulfur, so that ruled out demons at least. Fuck, he had to hurry this up. It'd been nearly five minutes since he'd fired that gun and though the motel wasn't crowded by any means, surely someone would come investigate any second. But he couldn't leave the room without knowing what happened to Sam…

"SHIT!" Dean kicked the nearest chair across the room, smashing it to pieces when it hit the wall. His blood was boiling. Something had taken Sam, that had to be it, because Sam just wouldn't up and leave him like that (would he?), no matter how angry he was, and he would find out what-

What was that on the floor?

Dean crouched and stared at a tiny spot on the floor. He hadn't seen it because it'd been covered by the chair.

It looked like a single drop of blood.

Well, there was about to be a lot more of it, because whoever took Sam was going to be torn apart piece by bloody piece.

Dean would make sure of that with a smile on his face.

Drip, drop. Drip, drop. Drip, drop.

The light plinks of droplets of liquid hitting something metallic slowly pulled Sam out of the black nothingness he'd fallen into. Something was wrong, he knew that much, as he struggled to reach full consciousness. It was cold… why was it so cold? He didn't remember their hotel room being that cold and musty-smelling… he tried to open his eyes to see the room, but his eyelids felt like they were weighed down with cement blocks. They were so heavy… maybe he'd just go back to sleep… When he tried to move to get more comfortable he realized he couldn't. The all too familiar burn of rope binding his wrists slammed into him.

He was in the dingy motel room, breaking down. His breathes were coming too fast for him to breathe. His eyes were welling up with tears too fast for him to see. The hitches in his breath were too loud for him to hear. He was falling apart and this time nothing would be able to put him back together.

He was barely able to distinguish the sudden presence of a shadow coming from behind him. For one split second he thought, Dean. But it was wrong, all wrong, too tall and muscular. He turned around, reaching for the knife in his boots and-

Nothing.

Fuck. Something must have gotten the drop on him. But there was nothing left to hunt in this town, they'd gotten the vampires… hadn't they? Adrenaline running through his veins, Sam forced his eyes open and blinked to clear away the blurriness. He was in a large industrial-looking room with cement floors and… nothing else he could see. It was dark, but there was enough light from a small window behind him to illuminate the room just enough that he could see. Unfortunately the window was too small, just a slit in the wall really, not to mention too high for him to even think of reaching.

Drip. Drop. Drip. Drop.

His quick visual scan of the room told him he was in a warehouse, probably in the middle of nowhere so no one could hear him scream. Fantastic. His arms were bound behind him and tied to the chair, tight. Same for his ankles. He couldn't move worth a damn. He struggled to move his wrists even a tiny bit. Even if all he succeeded in doing was making himself bleed, that was fine. It might loosen the rope just enough for him to slip out if he bled enough.

Drip. Drop. Drip. Drop.

Blood… blood… did he smell blood? He turned and searched the room with his eyes, craning his neck to look behind him again. The warm sticky sensation of something flowing down his neck finally reached him. He looked down and saw parts of his shirt were wet but it was too dim to see with what. But he could guess.

Fwwwssssh. Now the plinking sound that'd woken him up sounded almost like a faucet turned low, just enough to let a small stream of water through.

Vampires must be bleeding him.

Thankfully Sam was tall enough that even with his ankles bound he could just barely touch his heels to the floor. He struggled and kicked his feet out as much as he could to finally make the chair scooch back a few inches. Now in his line of sight was a metal pail to his left, sloshing as the chair nearly knocked it over. A thick dark liquid was inside it. Blood. The pail was collecting the blood from his neck. That was why his neck had been craned in that direction when he'd woken up. The vampires had probably counted on him not waking up again.

The pail was a little over half full. He shivered. It must be the blood loss making him so cold. At a thump from the direction where he guessed the door was, though he couldn't see it in great detail, Sam turned his head. His blood was quickly turning the floor around him red and made a harsh sound as it dropped.

A tall woman with long blonde hair and grungy, dated jeans and flannel walked in. Upon closer inspection he could see the hair was tangled and mated, and her pale skin was covered in dirt. Not to mention she reeked of a combination of scents that could only mean the woods, and mostly, blood. Vampire.

"Now see here, Hunter," she said in a thick Southern accent as she stopped directly in front of him, only a foot or two in between them, "That vampire nest you just slaughtered? They were my cousins. My family. And you don't mess with my family. So now I am going to kill you. Nice. And. Slow. I am going to rip off one your limbs for every member of my family you killed. But first, I'm going to make good use of that sweet, sweet blood pumping through your veins."

Sam spat in her face, making sure to aim for her eyes. "Yeah? You and what army? All I see is a lone backwards reject."

The vampire glared at him before composing herself and bringing her hands to her mouth in mock surprise. "Oh, how rude of me! I'm so sorry, I forgot to introduce the rest of my family. Thems baaad manners," she drawled. "Hey y'all, come on in and join the party!"

The doors burst open as twenty vampires made their way into the warehouse.

"Meet my family. They've been dying to meet you. Every. Single. One. Of. Them... And darlin' I have a big family."

Squish.

"I'm going to ask you one more time- Where. Is. My. Brother?"

"I don't-"

Squuiiiish.

The vampire screamed as the blade twisted deeper into its stomach. The First Blade went full circle, blood flowing sluggishly from the wound.

"Where-stab-is-stab-my-stab-brother-stab?"

Dean had found the vampire while searching around the town for Sam. It had been running towards the outskirts of the town with purpose, obviously heading somewhere it deemed important… so naturally he used his newfound demonic abilities to capture the thing and inject it with dead man's blood. Nice and compliant for questioning. The bloodsucker howled in agony with every stab of Dean's blade. It wouldn't kill her until he wanted it to kill her.

Dean laughed.

"I'll- I'll tell you okay, just- stop. Please stop," it sobbed. It looked like a woman, but he wasn't fooled. These monsters were all the same. It wasn't like she was a 'vegetarian' or anything, so he felt completely justified in what he was doing. She might know where Sam was, after all. Why shouldn't he have a little fun with it?

"Hmmm… Start talking. But make it quick, or I have a lot more where that dead man's blood came from." He lifted a syringe full of it for good measure.

The vampire nodded. "Our leader told us to come to her. That she needed all of us for something important."

"What was it?"

"I don't know, she didn't say- AAAAHHHHH!" In the blink of an eye the syringe was sticking out of her throat, poison flowing through her veins. "I swear I don't know! I don't know!"

"Where's your Alpha?" Dean growled.

"S-Some old warehouse… past the abandoned library on Jefferson. I told you what you wanted to know, not let me g- AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" The blade twisted in her guts once, twice, thrice. "But that's not fair! You said-"

"I know what I said. But how do I know you're telling the truth? This could be a trap. And honey, didn't your mother ever tell you demons lie?" Dean sneered as his eyes flashed black.

She screamed.

He laughed.

There was a buzzing in his ears… it was so loud… getting louder… why wouldn't it let him sleep? All he wanted to do was sleep. He was so tired… but the buzzing grew louder still. He mentally groaned and tried to push past the fog in his mind. His eyes felt like they were weighed down with lead. Does this feel familiar? But then a familiar voice reached his ears and his eyes shot open instantly. His body protested, the flesh torn after vampire after vampire had taken their turns biting him before he'd passed out.

And there Dean was. Laughing. Smiling with glee as he grabbed vampire after vampire and cut their heads off with the First Blade. Some he played with, stabbing them repeatedly and slicing and dicing. His laugh was pure joy when they screamed, screamed for mercy or just in agony. And the runners, those were his favorites. Any that tried to escape met a slow, painful end. It was a relief when the blade finally severed their heads from their necks. A kindness.

The leader of the vampire nest could do little but scream as she watched her family be slaughtered in front of her. It was painfully obvious there was nothing she could do to stop it. Nothing could stop Dean. Nothing could stop a Knight of Hell.

But when a male vampire's, her mate's, head rolled to stop at her feet she couldn't stay still a moment longer. She screamed and lunged at Dean, claws and fangs bared.

She was dead before she hit the ground.

Her head rolled directly in front of Sam's chair, frozen in a picture of wild rage.

"That-stab-will-stab-teach-stab-you-stab-to-stab-take-stab-what's-mine." Dean hadn't spoken the entire assault on the vampire's nest, but now he yelled, rage making his voice thick and guttural. He continued to stab and mutilate the corpse until there was practically nothing left of it, it was just a mass of red.

Red. That was all Sam could see. Every surface in the room was coated, soaked, saturated in it. Even Sam; he could feel the sticky warmth flowing down his face, his neck, his arms… but especially Dean. It was in his hair, flowing down his face and neck, and his clothes and boots were absolutely saturated in it. There was literally not a single surface that wasn't covered in red. The room had become a proverbial ocean of blood.

How had this happened?

"Dean," Sam whispered. His voice was hoarse and thin; it took almost everything he had in him to get that one word out. The world spun when he tried to sit up a little straighter to get Dean's attention. Nothing. Dean just kept on his primitive growling as he continued to mutilate the leader's corpse. "Dean, she's dead already. Stop. Stop, just stop. DEAN!"

Silence hung over the room like a heavy storm cloud ready to downpour at any second.

Sam slumped over, no longer having the strength to hold himself up. He blinked, or maybe passed out for a few seconds, he didn't know, and Dean was in front of him untying his binds. When he saw the bucket he growled and kicked it across the room, joining the ocean of blood.

He blinked again and eyes as black as coal were mere inches from his face, noses almost touching. Blood from his hair and face dripped onto Sam's. Covered in gore like that, and not making jokes or grimacing and complaining how disgusting this was… this was not Dean. Dean would never let himself look like that. Dean would never find such joy in killing.

The hairs on the back of Sam's neck stood up. He shivered. Every fiber of Sam's being screamed for him to run away, to get away as fast he can. That Dean- no, this demon- would kill him too. Despite the fact he felt he would pass out at any second and probably couldn't move a muscle, Sam's body tensed and prepared for flight.

And then the demon whispered "Are you okay Sammy?" and he was Dean again.

Sam knew he should be terrified after the display just moments ago, and maybe a small part of him was, but… really, he wasn't. He just didn't have it in him to be scared of his brother. Because this was his brother. That was proven, he'd come for him. Only Dean would fend off over twenty vampires to save him. It had to be.

A hand gently, ever so gently, brushed the tears off his cheek. It was the gentlest touch he'd ever felt.

"Yeah," he whispered, "I'm okay."

Sam closed his eyes simply because he didn't have the strength to keep them open anymore. There was the briefest sensation of being lifted and then arms around him… he forced his eyes open one more time. Dean was carrying him. In his arms. Like a fucking princess or something.

How did he still have the energy to blush?

"Dean, stop. I can walk."

Sam could hear Dean's smirk. "Pfft. Walk, my ass. You can't even keep your eyes open."

"I can too. Put me down… 's embarrassing." Sam's voice trailed off, growing ever softer.

"No can do, Princess."

"Jerk."

"Bitch."

Sam thought he had it in him to open his eyes one more time… Dean was grinning at him softly, his face a little too close for comfort and eyes too wide with concern to be a real smile. But Sam knew it was okay.

His eyes were a beacon of green in a sea of red.

Sam laid his head on Dean's shoulder and let his eyes close for good this time.

So give them blood, blood, gallons of the stuff!
Give them all that they can drink and it will never be enough.
So give them blood, blood, blood.
Grab a glass because there's going to be a flood!

-"Blood" by My Chemical Romance

This is the end of the chapters I had prewritten, so I have absolute no idea when an update will be. And don't worry, eventually we will learn what happened with Dean and the witch… it will be very important later on ;) SO stick around if you want to find out! Stay beautiful, my dears, and thanks to all for reading!