The Other Side of Sunrise

Part Two

They drive to another town, after that, to do another job. They gank another monster, and sleep off the fight in another oddly-papered two-star motel room.

Dean tries to bury himself in their work, tries to go to sleep every night in the twin bed next to Sammy's and just turn his brain off. He tries so hard not to be that monster, the only one he can't shoot or salt and burn.

But where there are no thoughts, there are dreams.

He starts waking up in the middle of the night, sheets twisted around him, dick half-hard, throat hoarse from panting. One day Sammy even mentions that he's been talking in his sleep; Dean smiles a smile that doesn't reach his bloodshot eyes and purchases sleeping pills.

Sam worries about his brother. The worry gnaws at him like a parasite. Even when his mind is completely occupied—when they're fighting for their lives, when Sam is researching on a deadline—he feels the slow, steady, sickly burn, knowing deep down that there's something wrong with Dean.

They fight with demons, vampires, shape shifters. Hunted by the FBI, by Lilith. Sammy falls prey to his addiction, and Dean fulfills his contract. He goes to Hell and Sam goes to his own personal dark place, demon blood and debauchery. Even when Dean comes back, visibly unchanged, the brothers are intrinsically different, a byproduct of their seemingly innocent choices and this damned life they've always led. Their very existence tangles and snarls, but throughout it all and despite their differences they're still together.

Even when angels enter the picture and Dean is thrown into a whole new mess, he still has dreams that keep him hot at night, that barely let him rest.

He's been spending more time out of their shared rooms, wherever they happen to be—drinking late at the bars, going somewhere with a willing partner and fucking until he can't stand, anything to forget for a few scant hours the mess of his life and the hole deep within him. It sends him deeper into despair when he realizes that all the men and women he fucks end up sharing qualities with his brother—brown hair, hazel eyes, that quirky dimpled smile, even timbre of voice or sense of humor. He finds no solace, anywhere, but he refuses to stop looking.

When they do sleep in the same room, Dean's slumbering moans become part of Sam's own dreams, which devolve into new nightmares. These are nothing like the precognitive terrors brought about by a yellow-eyed demon's forced destiny—these dreams shake him to the core. One he remembers despite himself, a zombie apocalypse where he is forced to run for days, every building full of the things, no weapon potent enough to even scratch them. When he finally succumbs to exhaustion and fear, collapsing on cracked asphalt, the zombies tear his clothes and his flesh from his body and perform terrible, terrible acts with their mouths, hands, and rotting genitalia. And all of them moan with his brother's voice.

A few nights the two of them wake up pointing guns at an empty room because they'd each heard the other scream—Sam has no idea that Dean's exclamation isn't one of terror.

After months of this, of barely sleeping, with each other constantly on their minds, Sam and Dean are steadily sliced and skinned down to one tender mental thread.

One calm night they check in to a place that rents bungalows, rather than rooms. Theirs is on the far end, abutting an orchard of some kind. The waning summer leaves a scent upon the air that, when Dean stretches and inhales on their porch, reminds him of slow, resigned decay.

He's been jaded all his life. Why not be poetic about it?

Sam joins him, then, and the brothers stare out into the deepening darkness. Neither speaks, each a soothing enigma, a familiar presence comforting the other, even as they both wallow in confusion—Sam at his wits' end worrying about Dean, and Dean sicker than he's ever been over his feelings for Sam.