Chapter Text
Ba-dump.. Ba-dump.. Ba-dump...
The sound of his own heartbeat was nearly deafening in Dean's ears. Even after the cure, it felt like his hearing, his awareness, was turned up to eleven. His mind flashed relentlessly with the image of his brother just watching him get turned, expression hard to read. It bled a special kind of panic into his body that made his heart stutter and hands shake.
He was sitting at the table by the window in their motel room, alone. The only light that washed over him was the sporadic flicker of the TV. A nearly empty bottle of whiskey accompanied him as he slumped over the table, right hand curled loosely over the skin-warmed neck. Dean had forgone the glass hours ago, hands far too unsteady to avoid spilling it all over himself.
A sluggish glance at the alarm clock told him it was 3:05 in the morning. The numbers were shining a brilliant artery-spurt red, and the longer he looked at them, the more they blurred into a pool of color. Dean turned away, swallowing sickly as he stared at the door.
Sam had shacked up for the night with some chick he'd run into from town, clearly preferring the company of a stranger over babysitting Dean. Earlier that day, they had bickered and argued, ending with Sam telling his brother off more coldly than he'd expected. As Dean sat praying to the Porcelain God, heaving up what he hoped to be the last dredges of vampire ick.. Little brother hit him with 'I need space' and 'You've been whining for days.' and 'I'm tired of your mood swings. What do you want from me?'.
So Dean was alone. They were in that brief limbo between hunts as he recovered, so Sam wasn't expected back until morning.. If he came back at all. The quiet made Dean anxious, and it made him think.
The older hunter had already had his suspicions about Sam. It had taken a little while to notice, with the high of having his little brother alive distracting him from all the little things that were.. Different. He knew that Sam would be different after going to hell. Dean was, and his tour was nothing compared to Sam's stint in the cage, however brief it seemed. But the 'different' that he expected wasn't what he saw.
Instead of the flashbacks and the nightmares, the moodiness and retreating into a bottle... Sam was fine. He was more than fine. More physically fit than Dean had ever seen his stringbean of a brother; more confident in his actions and abilities than he had ever imagined he could be. Maybe that shouldn't bother him, but it did.
He would never admit it, but there was something almost maternal within him that felt the change within his little brother. The Sam he knew, the Sam he raised, wasn't like this.. Was he?
A sudden laugh track roared from the TV, ripping him momentarily from his misery. Seinfeld... Dean's muddied green eyes flickered to the screen with vague interest. Motel cable was always a guilty pleasure of his.
The distraction brought him farther out of his stupor, and he shifted in his chair for the first time in what might have been hours. When he blinked, his eyes felt tacky. Sleep was finally beckoning him, making him dizzy with its gentle caress. Scooting the chair back, Dean took one final swig of the bottle he'd been cuddling with, then staggered up to his feet. With just a little bit of stumbling, the hunter made his way to the bed closest to the door. He was sure to set the bottle on the nightstand (well within reach) before dropping onto the cheap mattress fully clothed.
Dean barely had the sense to remove his shoes before he sprawled out on his back. His hands skimmed the scratchy blanket, a forlorn sigh filling the space between the meaningless commercials fighting for control of his wallet. With one final, fleeting thought about Sam, Dean drifted into a heavy slumber.
When he awoke again, it was to the door shutting with just barely enough force to alert him. Consciousness was hard won, the insistent pull of exhaustion threatening to drag him back under. Dean was still considerably drunk, telling him it could only have been a couple hours since he dropped off. That realization made his eyes snap open.
Immediately, he was greeted with a tall, shadowed figure standing over him. Dean flinched violently, hands clumsily slipping under his pillow in search of a weapon. Just as his fingertips brushed the cool steel of his knife, strong hands gripped him around the wrists and yanked his hands away. It forced him to get a good look at the intruder, and a familiar voice barked in his face.
"Dean! Hey! Relax, man. It's just me."
That made him pause. "Sam?" Dean slurred out, confusion overtaking the fear pounding in his heart. "Wha'dduh hell, man? Geddoff me.." He tugged at his wrists, grumpy that he'd been disturbed. When the other man let him go, Dean propped himself up on an elbow and squinted up at the figure still looming over him. "Wha's goin' on?"
His brother eyed him with what looked like a mix of pity and disgust. Sort of hard to tell through the blur skewing his vision. "Are you drunk?"
On any other day, Dean would be unbothered by Sam's occasional disdain towards his drinking habits. More often than not they're indulging together, so Dean always shrugged off the concern. But this time, it didn't sound like concern. More like judgement, and he found himself feeling shame burn into his already whiskey-blushed face. Instead of defending himself, he gave a half assed reply that held little apology.
"Yeah, well..." Dean trailed off, hands flopping out in a vague shrug.
His head felt soupy, and he could almost feel his brain sloshing as he glanced back at the clock. 5:32... AM. Why was Sam back so early? The older hunter swung his head back around to ask that exact thing, but he didn't get a chance to speak. Suddenly, he was snatched up by the lapels, nearly pulled completely off the bed with inhuman strength. Not Sammy.
Right?
Wide, wild hazel eyes burned into his. "I'm surprised at you, Dean. I thought you'd be better than this." The intruder punctuated his thoughts by throwing him into the television. After a loud crash of glass and sparks, Dean crumpled to the floor. On shaky arms, he pushed up to all fours. The stranger in his brother's skin was speaking again, the words slowly filtering through the ringing in his ears. Definitely not Sammy.
"...and I mean, I didn't even have to try. The mighty Dean Winchester, with so much blood on his hands.. Piss-drunk and all alone. But that's just your normal now, right?"
A vicious kick landed hard against his face, knocking him back down to the grimey carpet. Dean spat out a mouthful of blood, wincing as he licked at his split lip. "Whadd'are you?" He croaked out, head bobbing as he tried to eye his attacker. His vision dipped and swayed. "If you hurt my brother.. I swear--"
"Oh, don't worry. I wanted him alive and completely unaware... Leaving me plenty of time to play with you, Dean." A wolfish smile bared Not-Sam's teeth wide. He bent down on one knee, grabbing Dean's chin and roughly forcing his head up. "Little brother's too busy getting wet-n-wild with that skank from the bar. And something tells me he's gonna take his sweet.." He reared back and struck Dean across the face. "Sweet..." He did it again, relishing in the grunt he got in return. "Time. And so will I."
Dean barely registered the hand fisting in his hair, yanking his bruised and bloody face upward again. Once the blurring of his vision eased enough, he glared defiantly at what might be a shifter. If Sam was alive.. And he wasn't body-jacked by a ghost or demon.. His right hand skimmed the carpet cautiously, searching for something to stab with, to throw, anything. Thankfully, Dean's captor continued to drone on.
"At first I thought I'd have to convince you I was him, to even get close. The stories I've heard about you two.. Stuff of fables, really." Unbeknownst to him, Dean's hand had closed around a sizeable chunk of glass. "Had me thinking you were some kind of badass, Dean! I mean, how ruthlessly you slaughtered my family, I thought you'd be more of a challenge." The stranger's features twisted into a look of pure loathing and disgust. "Turns out you're just a trigger happy drunk. No wonder your brother thinks you're--"
The creature's taunting was cut short as Dean swung out in a vicious arc, managing a clean slice to the side of his neck. It wouldn't do much, but it could buy him some time. The hunter scrambled to his feet, booking it for the duffle bag closest to Sam's bed.
He heard the thing snarl in his brother's voice. Not-Sam slapped a furious hand against his gushing neck, eyeing Dean with murderous intent. In seconds, the torn skin knitted together like new. Before he could even wrap his hand around a silver blade, the intruder clung to the back of his shirt and tossed him against the wall by the bathroom.
Dean cried out as his back slammed into an old picture frame, its remnants joining him on the floor in pieces. He instinctively grabbed a long chunk of the frame, nearly sagging with relief when he saw it was coated in silver. Thank fucking God. As the monster stalked forward, Dean thrust the sharp end toward his organs. His aim was a little off, but he still felt satisfaction as he clipped the shifter in the side, carving a trough that seared and burned.
The shifter howled in anger and pain, ripping the makeshift weapon from his hands and quickly tossing it aside as it made his skin sizzle. Dean tried not to wince at the sound. It still looked and sounded like his brother, after all. It never got easier hearing Sam in pain, whether it was him or a near perfect copy.
In that moment of distraction, the injured hunter stumbled into the bathroom, feet slipping on pieces of picture frame and the cheap carpet. He slammed the door shut, uselessly locking it before he searched himself for his phone. Dean almost cried when he felt it in his back pocket. The screen was cracked. With shaking hands, he turned it on, and the relief that he could still dial made his legs weak. The man slid to the floor as he called his brother. Called the real Sam. Please please please...
He almost jumped out of his skin as the shifter started banging on the door. The phone slipped from his unsteady hand, barely two rings in. The banging got more violent. Dean pressed himself against the wall, desperately searching for some kind of weapon again. There was nothing. Fuck.
His head was pounding, he felt sick, his face and back were screaming. Dean gasped for breath, forgetting the phone entirely.
Ka-Crack!
The door finally gave out, hinges breaking away from the frame in a spray of splinters. It landed against the mirror with a thud, shattering the glass. The shifter's shoes crunched over the scattered shards, disregarding everything except for Dean. His prey.
The hunter kicked out at him, but his enemy was done playing around. The shifter grabbed him around the ankle and dragged Dean out, raking him over the glass as he tried to grasp at anything, kicking and bucking. A particularly rough pull tore thin slices up his arms. Dean yelped helplessly. Cas! He prayed without thinking, sending out one last distress call. A little help would be nice! With how restless and distracted Cas had been lately, he didn't really expect an answer. Yet he hoped, what with their "profound bond" and all that, the angel would feel compelled to answer his plea.
Dean reached out again for another chunk of the broken picture frame, but he wasn't fast enough. A heavy boot stomped on his wrist and stayed there, grinding him into the carpet. It pulled a deep groan from his chest, bones creaking against the pressure. Shaggy brown hair fell into his vision as the shifter leaned down and grinned.
"You're pathetic." A nasty right hook rung his bell hard. "I don't know why he-- I, keep going back to you." Huh? Another hit scrambled his thoughts even further. "If you thought my problems started when you dragged me away from school, think again!" His brother's hands - wait, not Sam.. right? - snatched him up again, dragging him to his feet. Dean saw rage and hate in those familiar hazel eyes. Sorry, Sammy..
"When I was a kid I thought I was cursed. Turns out... You are my curse. The world would be better off without you." The fingers curled in his shirt wound tighter, popping the seams. "And I'm gonna make sure you never get to curse another family again. Your bloodshed ends here, Dean."
The barely conscious hunter was dropped to the floor, landing on his back with an agonized grunt. His cracked ribs threatened to break. Dean opened his bruised eyes as far as they could go, seeing nothing but Sam's menacing figure towering over him, hands clawed in anticipation. In a blink, he descended upon him, straddling Dean's struggling form as he began to strangle him.
Dean kicked and twisted with all he had, gasping thinly whenever he could pull in some air. The bloody fingers around his throat squeezed slowly, firmly. The shifter clearly wanted to take his time.
The man beneath him wheezed, his own hands frantically scratching at any skin he could reach. It did little more than annoy his attacker. So Dean tried everything else that he could. Pulling hair, punching, kicking. He'd bite and spit if he could.
Suddenly, the shifter let him go. Dean immediately sagged, coughing and gasping. He strained to follow his movements, but the shifter reappeared quickly and with purpose. He brandished a long blade, stepping over Dean once more as he held it over his head with both hands, blade down like some ritual sacrifice. Dean tried to curl up, protect his face and organs, but it didn't matter.
The blade sunk deep into his side, just far enough over not to immediately kill him. Dean screamed as he felt it just barely pin him to the floor. Like an insect. Hands were on his neck again, cutting off his miserable whimpering. "Stay still." Sam's voice growled in his ear. Sweat and tears trailed down Dean's face, confusion clouding his eyes and mind. I'm so sorry, Sammy. I'll do better. I swear.
He wanted to say as much, but all he managed was a strangled croak. This was it. Sam was gonna kill him. And the kicker was, Dean deserved it.
His body shook with adrenaline and pain. Dean's limbs slowly went limp, uselessly sliding to his sides. He could feel the blood straining in his face, turning him purple. Just as he thought the last thing he'd see was Sam's hate filled, remorseless gaze, the front door was kicked in with a bang!
Words were exchanged above him, but Dean understood none of it. All he could focus on was breathing as a dark tinge started to overtake his vision. The tinge turned red as the knife in his torso was jostled cruelly. A hoarse cry left him without much thought. "S-Sam, stop!"
A gunshot went off. The figure above him listed over and dropped to the left of him. His little brother's lifeless eyes stared blankly into his. And that's the last thing that made sense for a while.