Work Text:
2013
Dean is descending the stairs into the bunker after returning from the Lebanon post office, shuffling through a fistful of mail (junk, junk, junk, Victoria’s Secret catalogue) when one envelope catches his eye. It’s beat to hell, there have been several attempts to forward it, and he stops dead when he sees that the return address is from Kermit, Texas.
His mind immediately goes to the worst possible place: that Sam has been keeping secrets from him, and maybe Sam isn’t as done with his previous life with Amelia as Dean thought he was. And, yeah, maybe he’s only going there because of the secrets he’s been keeping from Sam and Dean doesn’t want to believe that he’s the only asshole here. But still, the notion stings, and now he can’t get it out of his head.
He should just put it in Sam’s room, he thinks as he walks past Sam’s room.
He should just hand it to Sam when he gets back, he thinks as he stuffs it into his desk drawer.
Whatever he does, he absolutely, positively should not read it.
Dean pretends to ignore the envelope while it taunts him from its concealed location for three days. Beer hasn’t made him give in. Neither has bourbon. Whiskey finally does it. He tears it open and it’s like ripping a bandage off a wound that hasn’t healed. It takes him several more minutes before he unfolds the pages inside.
He doesn’t see what he expects. What he sees is much, much worse.
It’s a detailed explanation of benefits for medical services rendered at a clinic, and now he wishes to hell that he’d just put it in Sam’s room like he should have. He knows what methadone is used for. He’d looked it up after Sam’s second demon blood detox.
************************************************
2012
It happens by accident.
It’s the first lead that he’s had in his weeks-long search to find Kevin. Sam has been stalking the demon for days, waiting for the right time to present itself, carefully, patiently. When the opportunity comes, he doesn’t waste it.
They’re in an old, abandoned barn on an old, abandoned farm. There’s a devil’s trap on the floor, a demon tied to a chair, the demon-killing blade in his right hand and holy water in his left. The usual.
Splash. Hiss. Scream. “Where is Kevin Tran?” It’s becoming a monotonous rhythm. You could almost dance to it.
The demon’s scream ends in a laugh. The laugh ends in a taunt.
“You can go to hell. Oh, oops, sore subject, huh?”
Splash. Hiss. Scream. “I can do this all night.”
“I can do this all year. You, on the other hand, need to sleep some time. Now that you can, that is… what, too soon?”
This isn’t going well. Sam’s done this dozens of times before both with and without Dean, grilled demons for information, gotten them to spill their guts. Dean could do it sometimes with just a look. But Sam’s edge has dulled along with his hope, and the demon can sense it. He has no leverage, and the demon sees nothing to fear. It’s fucking enjoying this.
Splash. Hiss. Scream. “Where is—”
The demon cuts him off. “Oh Sam, please. This is just embarrassing. I remember a time when you were a force to be reckoned with, and we would shudder at the mere mention of Sam Winchester, the Boy King. What happened to the man who was born to lead armies, who beat Famine, who pulled Lucifer himself back into his Cage? Look at you now. Just a pathetic imitation of what you used to be. Not much without your powers, are you?”
The demon has the gall to look sorry for him.
“For that matter, you’re not much without your brother, either."
He shouldn’t have let himself respond to the demon’s baiting. He shouldn’t have knocked the chair over to pour holy water down the thing’s throat. He definitely shouldn’t have let the chair put a scrape in the devil’s trap.
Suddenly Sam is on his back fighting for his life with the demon on top of him and the holy water three feet away; it might as well be on the moon now. The thing is strong, and Sam clearly isn’t at his best. It’s got a grip on his right wrist, holding the knife at bay, its other hand crushing his windpipe. And, damn, the demon is right, this is just embarrassing and he really isn’t much without Dean. As darkness teases his peripheral vision Sam strikes with his left at the crook of the thing’s elbow once, twice, then hits a nerve bundle and breaks its hold on his throat on the third try. He reaches across and grabs the knife out of his pinned right hand with his left and slashes blindly across its throat. The spray hits him in the face.
He reflexively licks his lips without thinking.
Oh, yes.
Something reawakens in him and the longing stirs from somewhere deep within, becomes a living thing desperate for nourishment, and the memory of power whispers to him: you can have this again, it’s still in you, you just need to take it.
The demon’s eyes go wide with surprise as Sam pulls it down to him. Another mouthful, and his blood ignites with ecstasy. Another one, and strength courses through him and the power is once again his to command. Sam flips the demon over like a ragdoll and pins it. The whimpering sounds coming from beneath him fade as the drumbeat in his chest and echoing pulse in his ears resonate with the waves of energy coursing through his veins. And the look on the demon’s face, oh that look, now the fear is there, and isn’t it beautiful?
Oh, fuck, yes.
A laugh is torn from Sam as he licks blood from his teeth.
I am your answer.
A little more, and he can just rip the information he needs from this thing’s mind as it dies.
I am your weapon.
A little more, and he’ll be able to extinguish every demon around Kevin with a thought and just walk him out.
I am your power.
A little more, and he’ll be able to force Crowley to say anything, do anything he wants. By the time he’s done with him, Crowley will happily bring Dean back in exchange for a pack of gum.
Set me free.
A little more and—
If I didn’t know you, I’d want to hunt you.
—and he’ll become a black-eyed monster that Dean would have to kill. For a second, just a second, he thinks it might be worth it to have his brother back for those few moments before Dean turned the blade on him. Right before Dean would turn the blade on himself.
Horror and revulsion and shame replace his euphoria and a gasping sob escapes him as Sam plunges the knife into his only hope, watching the heat lightning crackle inside it until it fades. He scrambles away from the body and shoves a finger down his throat to trigger his gag reflex, trying to force it all out.
Two years. He’d been clean for more than two years. Or is it one hundred and eighty-two years? His brain absurdly spends a few cycles wondering whether it’s his soul or his physical body that carries the taint. He’d never really thought about it before. It must be his soul; otherwise, why would he still carry the addiction after multiple resurrections? Why wouldn’t it have been purged? One hundred and eighty-two years, then. Give or take.
Christ, what have I done?
Demon blood is smeared across his face, soaked into his shirt, and the smell of it drives all rational thought from him. His higher brain function cuts out and he freezes where he is in stunned shock, like an animal facing certain doom with a car bearing down on it. The drum beat quickens. He can’t catch his breath.
A voice barks at him from a distant memory and breaks him out of his stupor: Son. Pull yourself together. Burn it.
It feels like someone else is driving Sam’s body around as he drags the bloody corpse outside, rips off his flannel and T-shirt and throws them on top, douses it all in salt and lighter fluid and sets it on fire. He tries to rinse off whatever is on his face and hands from water collected in a rain barrel, knowing that it’s futile, it will never come clean.
He belatedly remembers the holy water, still laying where it had been knocked out of his hand, most of the contents spilled. There might be a couple of swallows left. Sam hesitates, unsure of whether he really wants to know how it will affect him. He rinses his mouth and spits out one swig, swallows the next. It burns going down; he hopes it’s because of the damage done to his throat from the demon choking him.
Sam knows and dreads what’s coming next, but there’s no panic room, no one to make sure he doesn’t bite his tongue in half when he starts seizing. No Dean or Bobby or Cass to look at him with that mixture of pity and disgust and fear, so maybe it’s a blessing after all that they’re not here to see this.
The first time was cut short. The next time, he had an angel on standby. This time… there’s no other option, he has to get to a hospital. He can only pray that he didn’t get enough in him to go full on Poltergeist and start rolling around on the walls.
Wouldn’t that be fun to explain.
Sam is at a loss for what the hell he’s supposed to do next, assuming he even lives through this; he can’t trust himself to go near a demon again. Clearly, he’s too weak to resist that temptation, and even now he’s beginning to have doubts about whether he should have stopped, whether the irrevocable corruption of his soul to save Kevin and get Dean back was in fact too high a price. Sam does the only thing he can do right now, and digs clean shirts out of his duffel, puts them on, and speeds toward the nearest clinic.
He’s devastated when he realizes that the dog wasn’t a hallucination after all.
************************************************
2015
“Give me a sec.”
Dean is sitting across from Sam in the bunker’s kitchen, wishing he could be anywhere else right now. The look on Sam’s face is signaling an oncoming Sam Confessional Moment™, and those always make Dean uncomfortable. After coming face to face with Lucifer again, Sam hasn’t been able to shake it off, and since then he’s been beating the crap out of himself over… something. Dean has the feeling he’s about to find out what.
“I should've looked for you. When you were in Purgatory, I... I should've turned over every stone. But I didn't. I stopped. And I've never forgiven myself for it.”
Dean knows why Sam stopped; he’s known for a long time. And he also gets why Sam never told him. He had thought about confronting Sam about it once, but there had never been a hint of a relapse from him, not one sign that his control had ever wavered since. It was better to not poke that bear; Dean had been just as happy to let it go. He just wishes now that Sam hadn’t carried this baggage around for so long.
Dean buries it all under a tight smile. “Well... I have. Hey. That's in the past, man. What's done is done. All that matters now, all that's ever mattered, is that we're together. So... Shut up and drink your beer.”