Honey and Flies - Section One

[glasslogic]

Section One
The air was thick and humid, the music was grating, the tables were sticky and the beer was flat. White flakes of something were floating in his glass, and he could only hope that it was soap residue -- but the girl pressed up against his side was curved in all the right places and it wasn’t like he was there for the ambiance anyway. Dean flipped his wallet open under the table and took another look at the poorly copied photo he had tucked there, then glanced over at a man sitting a few tables away at the bar. Grow the hair out a little, add a year or two and about half a foot, some muscle... he was still pretty sure it was the same guy.

Which should have been freaking impossible.

Dean downed the last of the beer and signaled for another. A waitress slid one onto the table almost before he could put his hand down. Everything else about the place might suck, but the service was fantastic. Beside him, Lila-Laura-Lily-whatever was still distracted with what was happening on her phone. As she had been for the last forty minutes -- it was one of the things that had attracted Dean to her in the first place. Though she was possibly not quite distracted enough.

“I can see why you’d like him, nice shoulders,” his date said as she slipped her phone into her purse. She gazed speculatively across the bar to where the object of Dean’s attentions was poking aimlessly at a basket of stale pretzels. At least Dean assumed they were stale, the ones they had been served certainly were. “So... what am I, cover?”

Dean draped an arm around her shoulders. “What are you talking about? I thought we were just spending some nice time together, letting you get all of your whatever done before we slipped back to my motel room and got to know each other a little more personally.”

Lila-Laura-Lily, maybe Lena?-- gave Dean a skeptical look. “Fine,” she challenged. “Let’s go. Right now.”

“Ah, now now? Don’t you want to catch the end of the game first?” Lila-Laura-something-or-other glanced at the grimy screen over the bar playing a recap of something happening in what Dean suspected was Ecuador, but he couldn’t really be certain. His plan had been to find the guy -- if he existed -- then follow him back to wherever he was staying and... figure out what the hell was going on. Spotting his elusive target slipping into the bar in the first place had been a miracle, and Lily-Lila-Lauren had been a godsend when Dean had come across her sitting on the hood of her car in the parking lot bitching loudly on her phone about “Eddie” who had stood her up for the last fucking time. Single loners attracted more attention than an anonymous couple, no matter what the venue was, and she had been agreeable to being picked up. Besides, she had a certain sparkle in her dark eyes that made Dean think an evening would be worth the price of admission. Too bad he couldn’t keep his mind focused on being entertaining enough to keep her interest. And he definitely couldn’t leave the bar yet.

“Are you seriously gonna tell me that’s your favorite team?” she asked.

“Maybe?” Dean tried in a hopeful voice.

She rolled her eyes, then shrugged off his arm and slid out of the booth. “Look, Tim, or whatever your name is,” Dean supposed he deserved that, “you seem like a nice enough guy, and I like the way you fill your jeans, but I’m not really up to sitting on my ass all night keeping you company while you ogle other men. So, either we’re going, or I’m going. Which is it?”

Dean took another furtive look at the target and noted that he attracted the attention of the bartender and seemed to be trying to chat her up.

“Todd.” Laura-whatever snapped her fingers in front of his face.

“Sorry, yeah. I’m not ready to go yet,” he answered distractedly. Past her hip Dean could see the bartender flip her long hair over one shoulder and take a step back. She looked almost... scared.

Lila took a deep breath, then just kind of shook her head and walked off. Dean wasn’t exactly crying into his beer about it -- until he realized that instead of storming out the front door she was making a beeline for the true focus of the evening’s outing. He watched just long enough to see her tap his target on the shoulder while pointing back in Dean’s direction, then swore and turned as casually as he could back to his half empty glass. He stared resolutely at the really questionable band playing live at the other end of the bar until someone cleared their throat only a couple of feet from his elbow and Dean had no plausible way to avoid confrontation. He reluctantly looked up and felt instantly trapped by the clearest hazel eyes he could ever remember seeing. He could almost feel his brain grind to a halt.

“Hey, is anyone sitting here?” the target of his hunt asked with a smile, gesturing at the chair across from Dean.

“No, no -- go ahead,” Dean managed after an awkward pause that made the man’s grin grow even broader. He slid into the empty chair.

“I’m Sam.”

Dean barely managed to bite back his instinctive response of “I know.” What was wrong with him? The guy was good-looking, but not that good-looking, and he was the focus of a case. “I’m, uh--” Was it possible to even have eyes that...

“You are...” Sam echoed expectantly. His eyes, that Dean had been staring into for who knew how long, were sparkling with good humor, and something... more predatory, that made Dean’s libido sit up and take notice. He had to scramble to pick up the conversation.

“Dean, I mean...” Fuck. “Dean.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Dean. Come here often?”

Dean had the strong suspicion he was being made fun of, but couldn’t think well enough to focus on why. And that was wrong too, it was wrong because... callused, warm, fingers brushed the back of his hand, and it felt like an electrical current straight to his dick. The leg that slid against his own under the table destroyed what was left of his concentration and Dean couldn’t do anything but stare. He had gone for a few guys in his time, more out of curiosity and a sense of adventure than anything, but he would have gone for a lot more if any of them had affected him like Sam did. And that was wrong because... because... the curve of Sam’s lips looked sinfully inviting and possibilities were starting to arrange themselves vividly in Dean’s imagination. He wondered what those lips would look like sticky and swollen and wrapped around his cock. Felt sure he could find out.

“Let’s get out of here,” Sam said, as if following the thought. “Do you have a place?”

Dean nodded dumbly and stumbled out of his chair. Sam tossed a few bills on the table and they made their way out to the parking lot. The cold air seemed to clear his head a little, and Dean frowned as the pornographic montage in his head bowed a little to rational thought. He started to speak, but Sam brushed against him and his scent was spicy, intoxicating, and everywhere. Dean wanted to roll in it. Naked, with a lot of lube, and possibly some handcuffs.

“Which one is yours?” Sam asked, motioning towards the few cars parked in the dusty lot. Dean had to think about it for a second.

It was a good thing for public safety that the motel was only a couple of blocks away. Dean was painfully aware of Sam’s presence and kept having to force his eyes back on the road. He would have been perfectly happy to work off whatever was going on between them on the Impala’s leather interior, but Sam seemed to have other ideas. He had fished the car keys out of Dean’s pocket and the sight of them in someone else’s hand had sparked enough clarity for Dean to snatch them back and slide behind the wheel. Sam driving might have been a good idea after all though, because Dean had no idea what the speed limit was and was only vaguely aware of traffic. All his attention was drawn to the heated place on his thigh where one of Sam’s hands was resting.

Somehow he managed to find the motel and park without wrecking the Impala. Getting the key into the lock on the door was an adventure in itself, but eventually they stumbled into the room together and Dean kicked the door shut behind them. He impatiently pulled his t-shirt over his head and reached out to grab hold of Sam’s, but Sam caught his hands and pushed them back to Dean’s sides. Dean’s frustration was somewhat mollified when Sam stepped in close with the movement, pushing him back until his legs hit the bed unexpectedly and he fell, pulling Sam down with him onto the mattress.

The gun tucked into its holster in the back of Dean’s jeans dug deep into his skin, and along with the unexpected pain, a trickle of unease ran up his spine as something clamored distantly for attention in the back of his mind. He squirmed to pull the gun free, grabbing the wallet from his back pocket too for good measure, and dropped both carelessly onto the bedside table, ignoring when the wallet skidded off and fell to the cheap carpet below. With the source of distracting irritation dealt with the distant sense of alarm receded. Dean reached up to tangle his hands in Sam’s dark hair and pull him down to taste... everything. All at once if possible. Sam wasn’t as cooperative as Dean wanted though, resisting his intentions and staring off to the side. Exasperated, Dean followed his gaze to the gun.

“I hang out in rough places, it’s for protection,” Dean mumbled, trying to muster enough coherency to handle the situation and get Sam back on track. He wanted to touch, needed to be touched.

“Better safe than sorry?” Sam’s mouth curved into a smile, but the darkness in his eyes didn’t seem like passion to Dean. He frowned and opened his mouth to ask what was wrong, but Sam leaned in and distracted him, pressing a kiss beside Dean’s mouth with lips that felt fever warm and ignited an answering heat that flushed Dean’s skin and pulled a low groan from his chest. He couldn’t remember if he had ever been this turned on by anyone before and it felt fantastic -- but also wrong, too much feeling for too little action. There was something wrong. He was willing to ignore that persistent voice for another kiss though, a real one this time, and impatiently tried to lean up and claim Sam’s mouth. But Sam kept him pressed to the mattress with a hand on his shoulder, attention focused now on something down at the floor beside the bed. His expression was odd. The fog in Dean’s mind lifted a little more and he lay still, blinking at Sam in bemusement.

Sam leaned down and picked Dean’s open wallet up from the floor. “Is this a picture of me?”

“Um...” No good lies came to mind, Dean’s thoughts still spinning like agitated sand. “Yeah. I got it from--" Bobby. Bobby and his “little favor.” Conversations flashed through Dean’s mind, images from the past week, details of his hunt. The bar, the girl, the case, Sam. Shit. The sand settled into place and seared into coherent thought. Dean kicked Sam with both feet so that he was thrown from the bed and staggered into the dresser. At the same time Dean grabbed his gun with one hand and scrubbed furiously at his face with the other where Sam’s lips had touched him.

“Don’t you fucking move!”

Sam stood back up, staring intently at Dean. A wall of heat and lust slammed into him, sinking into his skin as though he had been standing in the dark and the sun had just risen. He felt his focus start to crumble, his entire body aching to move closer, forget everything else and just feel... He took a half step forward, then caught himself and bit the inside of his mouth hard enough to draw blood. Like before, pain sliced through the growing haze and his awareness of what was going on made it easier to shove aside the whatever.

“What the hell are you?” Dean demanded, motioning towards the bathroom with the gun.

“What do you mean?” Sam asked, eyes narrowing. Dean felt the pressure increase, shoved it aside easily -- almost no effort at all with his growing rage and the pain of deliberately raking the wound in his mouth with his tongue.

“You know what I mean, and if you don’t knock that shit off right now I swear to God I’ll put a bullet in you.” He moved to stand between Sam and the door, cutting off any escape.

“In a hotel room surrounded by who knows how many people?” Sam asked skeptically.

Dean’s own expression was grimly satisfied. “Not even going to try denying it? And it’s a motel, jackass, learn the difference.” He took a few steps forward, watching satisfied as Sam backed up in response, keeping about six feet between them.

“Still a lot of witnesses to a shooting,” Sam suggested, something that might have been the first edge of panic coloring his voice.

Dean’s smile was thin. “I’ll ask one more time, what are you?”

Sam ignored the question. “Look,” he tried, “this was all just a mistake. Let me go and you’ll never see me again.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of.” The sudden flurry of movement took Sam off guard. Before he could react Dean had him shoved in the bathroom and slammed the door shut. Dean propped a straight-backed chair under the handle and Sam-the-whatever was as secured as he could be in the circumstances.

“Let me out!” The thin wood did almost nothing to muffle Sam’s voice and the door shuddered as he slammed his fists against it.

Dean snorted. “I don’t think so. We’ve got some talking to do, and I like you better in a box.”

“Fuck you!” Another angry thump.

“Almost,” Dean growled. “We’re going to chat about that, too. And stop it with the door, we can’t talk over the racket.”

The banging stopped abruptly. “Who the hell are you? Why do you have a picture of me?”

Dean leaned against the wall opposite the door, arms crossed and expression grim. “How about you start answering my questions first?”

“One for one?”

Dean rolled his eyes, the effort completely lost on Sam who couldn’t see him, but it made Dean feel better. “Fine. What are you?”

He could almost hear the shrug in Sam’s reply. “I’m an incubus. It’s, uh, like a kind of... sex demon.” The last two words trailed off into what sounded almost like embarrassment.

Not that it mattered.

Dean snorted. “No, you aren’t.”

“You’re so smart, what the hell do you think I am?”

“Do you even know what an incubus is? It’s a wrinkly old grey boogey monster that uses its mojo to make people think it looks like whoever it wants to look, and then whammies them into being mind-fucked slaves. For fun. It doesn’t feed off them, it’s just a pure sadistic predator. They live off hamburgers like the rest of us. Maybe you’re some kind of witch, or something, but you’re definitely not an incubus.”

“A witch?” Sam asked incredulously. “I bet you believe in Santa Claus too.”

“Which one of us thinks they’re a sex demon?” Dean snapped back. “You think you can be an incubus, but witches -- those you don’t believe in.”

The pause this time was more considered. “I hadn’t really thought about it like that.”

“I guess not a lot of time for things like that when you’re busy killing people and scouting out your next meal,” Dean growled.

Sam ignored the comment. “Where did you get my picture? Why were you looking for me?”

“I got it from Bobby, you remember your foster-dad, right? The guy who’s worried sick about you? You stopped calling, the local papers said you and your girlfriend washed up dead on a lakeshore after a storm. But then the morgue couldn’t seem to find your corpse and guys like Bobby and me always find that worth an eyebrow raise or two. We like to know our loved ones are good and cremated before we write them off. He couldn’t come himself, but I owed him a favor so he sent me to find out what the hell had happened. I was poking around your apartment and that druggie neighbor of yours -- Stan, Dan--"

“--Han,” Sam supplied in a subdued voice.

“Yeah, whatever. He swore up and down he had seen you alive in a bar out here a few days after the drowning but hadn’t managed to speak to you before you vanished into the crowd. It seemed like a long shot, but I owed your dad so I flashed your photo around and voila! People said you looked familiar, so I trolled the area for a couple of nights and happened to catch your overgrown ass slinking into that rat trap this evening.”

“What are you?!”

“I’m a hunter.”

“A hunter?” Sam asked in a confused voice.

“Take a look in the mirror and figure it out,” Dean snapped, angry and heartsick over what he was going to tell Bobby. It would have been better all around if Sam had just been dead -- and maybe that was all he would have to say. Sam was dead. The morgue had just been a mix up, but now it was taken care of. It would be true soon enough anyway.

“I’m not hurting anyone,” Sam protested. “What I do -- they’re fine afterwards. I’m harmless, I don’t--"

“Pull the other one,” Dean said scornfully. “I do this for a living, you think I don’t check out the local area when I come to a new town? People are dying around here. Young people, who like to party and hang out and probably aren’t too careful when someone hot and friendly offers to take them home for a few hours. And there are no marks on the body, and there is no cause of death. Just corpses and broken lives. Does that sound harmless to you? Because if it does, I have to say they’re teaching a whole different way of looking at the world at that fancy university of yours. I was going to check out all these mysterious deaths after I figured out what the hell was going on with Bobby’s missing foster kid, but looks like I managed to nail two birds with one stone on this one.”

“I don’t kill people! I barely--“ Sam cut himself off, like he could tell that his words were falling on deaf ears. He switched direction. “What are you going to do with me?”

“What do you think I’m going to do?”

“What are you going to tell my dad?” Sam hissed.

“Foster dad,” Dean growled back. Something that still rankled since he felt like he had practically grown up in Bobby’s house, and in all that time no toy, no picture, no clue had indicated Bobby had a kid. Though to be fair, Bobby admitted his sister had done most of the raising. He didn’t want his son involved in the business and didn’t think he could keep him out of it if he lived in the middle of it. But then the sister had died and Sam had come back for a few short months before it was time to leave for college. By then Dean had been dealing with his own father’s death and out on his own -- more than a few months were passing between visits to Bobby’s. He didn’t know why it bothered him so much, except that Sam was clearly a big deal to Bobby, and Dean had just... never known. It felt like something he should have known. “And I’m not going to tell Bobby a damn thing except that the papers got it right.”

Absolute silence from inside the bathroom. Then, “Are you just going to shoot me through the door?”

“That eager to get it over with?”

“No, I just... you’re all ‘save the people,’ and there’s an awful lot of sleeping people on the other side of some very thin walls if you miss. What does your job description say about them?”

Dean swore under his breath. “It says if you don’t make this harder than it has to be I’ll buy you some ice cream before we... get it over with.”

“By ‘it’ you mean my life.”

“You’re a monster, you don’t get a life. Or an unlife, or whatever the hell you’re enjoying right now.”

“Uh huh,” Sam did not sound persuaded by the argument. “Aren’t you afraid that when you open this door I’m going to enspell you again?”

Dean winced at the memory. Just thinking about how Sam had looked above him on the bed was enough to make his dick take renewed interest. He hoped the icy shower he planned to take after he was done with Sam would wash the rest of the whatever out of his system, because this shit was the last thing he needed. “You didn’t do such a hot job of that the last time you tried it. I know what you’re doing now, and your presto-enchanto crap won’t work on me again. If it makes you feel better, I promise it will be fast.” Assuming bullets would even work on whatever Sam was, because if they didn’t it might be one long-ass night after all.

Sam’s answer was another loud thump, but this time not on the door.

“Are you hitting the wall?” Dean asked with a frown.

“HELP!” Sam yelled instead of a response. “HELP! I NEED SOMEONE TO HELP ME!” From the uproarious banging and thudding suddenly coming from inside the bathroom, Dean thought Sam was maybe trying to kick through the wall. He lunged for the door and pulled the chair away, but the handle wouldn’t turn. Locked from the inside.

“HELP! HELP ME! GET ME OUT OF HERE.”

Someone on the other side of the wall started banging back. “SHUT UP OR I’LL CALL THE MANAGER.”

“DO THAT!” Sam screamed back. “AND THE COPS! HELP!”

Kicking through a wall would have been infinitely easier to deal with than witnesses. Shit. Dean twisted the handle violently as Sam kept up his barrage of banging and screaming. Something snapped inside the mechanism, but it remained stubbornly intact. Frantic knocking started on the front door just as Dean pulled back his leg to kick in the bathroom one. He aimed the first kick at the lock area. The door held firm, but the frame splintered. Before he could kick it a second time the sounds of a key at the front door brought his swearing to an all-new height. He stepped back and tucked the gun away in the back of his jeans again. Without the holster it was in danger of sliding into his pants, but it was worlds better than having it in hand with witnesses.

He had just dropped his shirt back down when the front door flew open and a skinny man with tousled hair and an irate expression stormed in. Behind him Dean could see at least five or six people in various states of dress and equally pissed expressions standing around outside the door.

“What in God’s name is going on in here?!” The man, presumably the night manager, demanded.

Before Dean could come up with something, there was a rattle and then a cracking sound as Sam pried the bathroom door out of the shattered frame. He gave Dean a wary look and went to stand next to the motel manager.

“Uh,” Dean squinted to read the manager’s nametag. “Justin? Look, we’re sorry about the upset. It’s my brother, he’s, um--"

“Claustrophobic,” Sam offered, glaring at Dean over Justin’s shoulder. Dean had no idea why Sam was playing along, but presumed that people-eating monsters who were supposed to be dead were as interested in avoiding police attention as he was.

“He said to call the cops!” Justin-the-night-manager snarled. “And you had better believe they are on their way after all this! It’s four in the morning! Do you have any idea how many people you woke up?!”

The crowd outside the door was growing. Dean was certainly starting to get a pretty good idea of how many people Sam had managed to disturb. He gritted his teeth. “Sorry, the door got stuck and he... panicked.”

Justin turned to face Sam, who quickly composed his glare into an expression of contrition.

“Is that true?” Justin demanded.

“It’s true. I--"

“--was locked in a truck for a week when he was a kid. Bad memories,” Dean supplied.

“It was traumatic,” Sam agreed, expression somewhat strained. “Some psycho with a gun kidnapped me. Fortunately, some nice people rescued me just in time.”

Justin glanced between the two of them, looking highly suspicious. “I don’t care what happened when who was a kid. You guys have woken up half this hotel and you’ve got some explaining to do when the police get here.”

“The cops? Awww, c’mon. We don’t really need them.” Dean gave Justin an encouraging smile. “Everything is fine now. Tell you what, me and my brother will just leave instead. Everyone can go back to sleep, and we can all just get on with our evenings--"

“Not a chance,” Justin said flatly, crossing his arms over his chest. “I called, they’re on their way, you can try and sell them whatever you want. And I hope you know you’re paying for that door!”

“Excuse me,” Sam tapped Justin on the shoulder. “You can keep him for collateral, but after what happened in the bathroom... I really feel like the walls are closing in. I have to get some air or I might start panicking again.” He didn’t wait for permission, just slipped around the end of the bed and headed for the door.

“Hey!” Dean objected, starting to follow.

Justin stepped firmly in front of him. “One of you is staying in this room and explaining this to the police!”

“I’m asking nicely, but you need to get out of my way,” Dean said tightly.

“You can just sit on the edge of the counter and wait,” Justin snapped.

Dean gave the doorway another frustrated look, then evaded Justin by simply jumping up onto the bed and back to the floor on the other side, scooping up his wallet in the process.

“Get back here!” Justin yelled behind him. The crowd outside the room had started to disperse and the few people still there gave him some truly dirty looks, but Sam was nowhere to be seen.

“Where did he go?” Dean demanded. He got a few halfhearted gestures in different directions, and then heard the wail of a siren from far down the street. Dean raked a hand through his hair in frustration, and then ran for the Impala -- which he was highly annoyed to find parked haphazardly across three spots. From the sparse recollections he had of arriving he supposed he should just be grateful she wasn’t parked in a light pole. Dean scanned the parking lot one last time as he pulled out, but Sam was nowhere to be seen.

~~~~~
“So he isn’t dead, then.” Bobby’s voice was somber. Dean hated having to tell him the news about Sam, but he had already dragged it out for three days. He hadn’t been able to find Sam again, and he couldn’t keep delaying. His hopes of handing Bobby a tidy confirmation of death didn’t seem likely to happen in the immediate future, so he had finally just picked up the phone and 'fessed up. He wanted Bobby’s advice anyway.

“Bobby I’m... sorry. I wanted to take care of it and--“

“You mean kill him,” Bobby surmised in a flat voice.

Dean sat down on the bed, ignoring the squeak of springs in the lumpy mattress. “You sent me out here to make sure he was dead. Those were your exact words! ‘They say he’s dead, I want you to go and make sure.’ So, I don’t know what the heck you thought was going on, but surprise! He’s alive. Or... something. They definitely had him in the morgue and I definitely have a coroner’s preliminary report that says cause of death was drowning. There are... pictures.” Dean flipped the file beside him open. “He looks pretty convincingly dead in these shots, but they didn’t get an autopsy before he apparently checked himself out. I don’t know what you want me to say here, Bobby. He claims to be a sex demon.”

“An incubus?” Dean could hear Bobby’s frown a thousand miles away. “That’s impossible, I watched that kid grow up. His dad put him in my arms before he could even walk. He was born human. You don’t just turn into a damn incubus!”

“I told him that!”

“What did he say?”

“Not much. Mostly he whined at me. I... he’s feeding on humans, Bobby. He died. He isn’t that kid anymore.”

“I know that,” Bobby growled. “You hear me complaining about you doing your damn job? I asked you to go because I couldn’t leave the case I was on, and you were in the area. And I trust you.”

Dean didn’t have anything to say to that. After a moment Bobby exhaled heavily. “All right. You think he’s responsible for those deaths you were talking about the other day? All those college kids?”

“It’s not just college kids, and no.”

“No?” Bobby sounded surprised. “Why not? Sounds like a fit to me. Sam feeds on people’s energy, these kids are dying without a mark on them and the timing seems to fit. Why 'no'?”

“Because it doesn’t fit,” Dean sighed, not happy about the collapse of his own favorite theory, but willing to admit mistakes if they could help him keep the body count down. “I couldn’t find Sam, so I’ve been doing other research in the daytime to try and narrow down his hunting ground. There are about twenty deaths that fit the pattern over the last eight months, but Sam couldn’t have been responsible for most of them. He only went missing about six weeks ago; the pattern started a long time before that.”

“That doesn’t mean he wasn’t responsible,” Bobby said reluctantly. “Maybe his death was staged, maybe he’s been like this for a long time. If he looks human... he could have been like this for years, Dean!” His voice lowered. “He could have been lying to me for years.”

“I don’t think so,” Dean disagreed, “and that’s not just to make you feel better either. He seems kind of... uncomfortable with it. I dug through everything I could find on him, even got my hands on his class schedules and attendance records for the past few months. He couldn’t have been responsible for most of these murders, not if he was sitting in a lecture hall with thirty or forty of his nearest and dearest fellow academics! I also interviewed a bunch of his friends, claimed I was doing a piece for the paper, and they all thought Sam was a great guy. Friendly, dependable, in love with his girlfriend. How many monsters do you know who can keep up an act like that for years?”

“Maybe he’s just that good at blending in,” Bobby said gruffly. “Lost control, killed the girl, and had to fake his own death to cover it up. It wouldn’t be the first time we’ve seen something like that. As for the deaths -- whatever he is, maybe there’s more than one of them hunting the area?”

“You said he’s a bright guy. So he fakes his death and then stays in the same town? Actually,” Dean frowned, “staying in the area doesn’t make any sense no matter what happened. Why the hell would he stay here where he could be recognized?”

“Ask him when you find him.”

“When I find him, Bobby, I don’t think there’s going to be a lot of time for conversation.”

“When it happens, I just want to know that it’s done. No details,” Bobby’s voice was heavy with pain and Dean had to remind himself again that this was practically Bobby’s son he was talking about killing. Even if he was already dead. Or undead. Whatever.

Which brought Dean back to why he had finally decided to call Bobby in the first place. “Have you ever heard of any kind of an undead monster that feeds on sex?”

“Nope. Any more easy questions?”

“Thanks.”

“No charge.” An awkward pause. “So, uh, how did you figure out what he does?”

Dean closed his eyes. He’d been really hoping Bobby wouldn’t ask. “How do you think?”

“You said you followed him into a bar and saw him stalking some chick. You see him lay the whammy on her?” Bobby asked hopefully.

“I said I saw him try to pick up some chick, and she turned him down flat. She wasn’t the one that got whammied, and a good thing too, since he might have managed to kill her.”

Bobby’s voice was a little strangled sounding when he spoke again. “So, uh... You and he...”

“Jesus, Bobby. A little slap and tickle with your undead foster kid isn’t the worst thing I’ve ever done for a hunt. Besides, he barely got my shirt off before I came to my senses,” Dean had a visceral memory of the heat of Sam’s body as he had ripped his own shirt off, desperate to get as much of Sam’s touch as possible on every square inch of skin. He cringed. The flashes weren’t as frequent as they had been, but Dean couldn’t wait until he could think about Sam and not have to deal with an impulsive desire to give him a tongue bath.

“That’s... I’m glad you’re okay, Dean. I uh, have supper burning. Gotta go.”

“Are you all right, Bobby?” Dean asked suspiciously.

“Yeah, yeah. Later.”

The dial tone rang in his ear a second later. Dean looked at his phone in surprise, but then shrugged and dropped it on the mattress. Bobby being a little weird was just Bobby, and he had more important things to worry about. Like finding Sam.

~~~~~
Five more days brought Dean nothing more than endless hours doing research and investigation, and long nights cruising dark streets and shady dives. There was no connection he could find between the victims other than their general age and social habits, and despite diligent searching -- no hint of Sam. By the end of the week Dean had decided that either Sam had moved on, or he had gone to ground so deep that looking for him was wasting time. But because it was for Bobby, and there was a substantial and growing body count that he couldn’t completely rule Sam out of causing, he gave it a second week. He was six days into it and reluctantly contemplating a third when he finally, finally caught a break.

It was three in the morning and the last bar he had planned to check was tossing out its patrons. The place was a few cuts above what he had originally been targeting as likely places for Sam to be frequenting, if he was even hunting in bars anymore, but the long nights of zilch had forced Dean to expand his field. As he cruised slowly by the parking lot band members were loading instruments into trunks, two cabbies were leaning against their cars and casually chatting while waiting for fares, college kids laughed and leaned against each other as they fumbled for keys they had no business using or staggered off down the sidewalk to walk back to wherever they slept... and in one shady corner a suspiciously familiar figure was talking to a woman in a skirt so short Dean could see the curve of her ass even from the street.

“Son of a bitch.”

He couldn’t park at the bar without attracting attention, so Dean hurriedly pulled into an apartment complex across the street and then crossed the road on foot. He cut through the scraggly trees of the lot beside the bar and took the opportunity to crouch behind some nearby bushes. He wanted to see Sam in action, to have proof of what he was doing to his victims -- before he had to intervene.

“So, do you, ah... want to go back to your place?” Sam was asking as Dean settled into place.

The woman shifted, rubbing her hands up her bare arms and glancing over her shoulder as if making sure her friends were still in sight. “Look, I don’t think this is a good idea, you know? You seem like a nice guy and all, but... I’m just not comfortable. Maybe if I see you here again we can get to know each other a little better?”

Dean was dumbfounded. When Sam had turned the charm on him it was been all he had been able to do to remember his name, and this woman was composing polite rejections?

“Are you going to be here tomorrow night?” Sam asked hopefully, sounded more like a plaintive kid than a skilled seducer to Dean’s calculating ear.

She shifted again, edgy and uncomfortable. “No, I don’t think so. I’m pretty sure we have other plans.”

“If you tell me when you might be back--“ he began.

“Look,” she interrupted, “just no, okay? I tried to be nice, but you’re kind of creeping me out, I mean...“ She trailed off, but Sam just nodded. He didn’t seem surprised by her attitude towards him.

“It’s okay. Thanks for the drink.”

That seemed to be more of the response the girl was looking for. She flashed him a weak smile and then fled back to her friends as fast as her high heels could take her. Dean watched, bemused, remembering another woman and another rejection. Maybe Sam wasn’t the great predator Dean had thought him to be after all.

Sam stood in silence for a few minutes, arms crossed and head bowed. “Is it you?”

Dean crouched frozen in place, not even daring to breath.

“I know you’re there. Dean? I can feel... people. You’ve been sitting in that bush for at least the last five minutes.”

“’People’ or ‘dinner’?” Dean asked harshly as he stood and brushed himself off.

Sam made no effort to move. “Does it matter? Do you care? After all, I’m just another one of your freaking monsters, put a bullet in my head and my body in a fire,” his voice was thick with bitterness.

“I thought you didn’t know about hunters.”

Sam actually looked up at that. The gun in Dean’s hand caught his attention, but then he set his jaw and looked up resolutely.

“Fuck you.”

“That’s more what I was expecting. Let’s go for a walk.” Sam just nodded jerkily and for a few minutes they trudged deeper into the thin wood and scraggly overgrowth. At the back of the lot the shadows were deep and it backed up to a chain link fence separating it from some kind of small appliance scrap yard. Dean was satisfied they were alone and unlikely to be spotted by any passing traffic. “Stop.”

Sam did and turned to face him, arms still crossed tightly and expression pinched. Dean took a minute to study his face by the light of the moon shining overhead. Two weeks didn’t seem like enough time to cause the changes he saw there. Sam looked gaunt and drawn, the shadows around his eyes too deep to be just an effect of the light. At the bar where Dean had first seen him and later in the motel, there had been nothing physically to set Sam apart from the other patrons. Nothing that said at a glance that he was anything other than the twenty-something college student he had been before death. Now he looked more like the morgue photos. Maybe his mojo was working, because otherwise Dean was shocked he had gotten even as far as he did with the woman who had fled from him in the parking lot.

“Maybe this is for the best.” Sam’s shoulders slumped and he looked resigned.

“Excuse me?”

Sam shrugged. “You, that--" He nodded towards the gun. “Like you said, I’m a monster.”

Dean felt the oddest sense of irritation. The monsters weren’t supposed to want to die. “Too bad you weren’t feeling so cooperative before I spent two freaking weeks hunting you down again!”

“Sorry.” He actually almost sounded like he really was. Sam glanced around at the ground, and then sat down on the bare dirt against the fence. He looked up and caught Dean’s expression. “I’d ask if you mind, but I don’t really care. What are you going to do, shoot me?” The watery smile wasn’t happy, but it was pretty obvious he wasn’t planning to run. “Whatever you’re going to do you can do as easily with me down here as up there.”

Dean’s eyes narrowed. “Standing too hard?” Sam’s demeanor was throwing him off his game.

“Yes,” Sam replied simply. “Is this going to take long?”

“What the hell do you think I’m going to do with a gun in the middle of downtown?” Dean asked with great annoyance. His plan had been to trail Sam and his victim back to wherever he was heading with her, intervene as needed once he saw Sam in action, save the girl, kill the monster, and be out of town before dawn. Sam calling him out of the bushes hadn’t been in the cards, and with no clean way to drag Sam across the street and stuff him in the trunk, now he was making it up as he went along. The area wasn’t deserted enough that a gunshot wouldn’t catch half a dozen people’s immediate attention. Hell, the bar parking lot only yards away was still crawling with stragglers and staff heading home. Besides, he still didn’t even know if a bullet would kill Sam. He needed privacy, and time, and--

“I’ve heard you can use a coke bottle as a silencer,” Sam offered. He fished one out of the random collection of odd litter that had accumulated against the bottom of the fence and held it out.

Dean glared. “A silencer? Those are only silent in movies. The only difference would be that fewer people sleeping in the apartment building across the street would be clued in. Not exactly stealthy, you know?” As if to demonstrate his point, laughter and catcalls drifted to their ears from the dissipating patrons still trying to sort themselves into cars in the parking lot.

Sam let the bottle fall to the ground. “I don’t know much about guns. Or apparently anything else. Are we going somewhere else then?”

“Okay, what the fuck is wrong with you?” Dean demanded.

It was Sam’s turn to glare, the expression the most animated one Dean had seen since cornering him. “You want to know what the fuck is wrong with me? Really? I was a fucking college student, Dean. I had a life, a fiancée, and things were looking pretty damn good. Then I went to a party where some creepy jackass molested me, and I wake up in the fucking morgue next to the corpse of the woman I wanted to spend my life with, and now apparently I’m some kind of God-knows-what that feeds on sex. With strangers. The girl I wanted to marry is dead and I’m screwing strangers in dark alleys to survive! I can’t even find the bastard who did this to me, and now some random asshole runs me down, says I’m the bad guy, and wants to put a bullet in me! So you know what? Fine. I don’t even know what the hell I’m supposed to be fighting with you for. I’m dead and you have no idea what that feels like from in here. You want to put me down? Go for it.”

Awkward silence hung in the air. Sam was staring resolutely back at the ground between his shoes, like the rant had extinguished what little fire he had managed to find, and Dean wasn’t sure what to say. He didn’t like it when the monsters showed a human side, so he neatly circumvented any moral quandaries by cutting to the most relevant point of Sam’s little blow-up.

“You know who did this to you?”

Sam nodded. “It’s not just one person, I mean -- one person did this to me, but there’s a whole group of them. I see them sometimes,” Sam raised his head a little and glanced warily back towards the street, “following me, watching me. I won’t do what they want, I’m trying so hard to not do what they want, and to find them. I want them to pay for what they did to Jessica, and to me, and to everyone else they’ve killed! But they always see me coming, and it’s so hard to just think anymore. I can feel myself falling apart inside...” His voice trailed off and his hands tightened into fists so hard that Dean could see the hard peaks of his knuckles blanched against the skin.

Dean swore internally. The monsters weren’t supposed to be human. And they definitely weren’t supposed to be sad, and lonely, and pathetic. In Sam’s profile Dean could see not just the killer he had been stalking, or the man he had wanted naked more than he had wanted air, but for the first time he really looked at Sam and saw Bobby’s son -- a guy not that far off from his own age who was as much a victim of the supernatural as anyone Dean had ever met.

Shit.

He ruthlessly drowned his inner girl by reminding himself that Sam had information that could lead him to a whole nest of the whatever-they-were, and that was going to be far more expedient towards saving lives than busting his ass spinning in circles for the next six months while the bodies racked up.

“Let’s go.”

Sam grabbed the chain link fence and hauled himself to his feet. It took him a minute or two.

“What is wrong with you?”

“Didn’t you already ask me that?”

“Yeah, but then I was pissed. Now I actually want to know,” Dean snapped.

Sam shrugged gracelessly. “I’m tired. No reserves left. Haven’t you ever been starving before?”

“You said you feed on sex?”

“Yeah.”

“Then what the hell are you starving for? This is a college town! You can’t find someone blitzed after a kegger and kind of, you know -- do your thing?”

“Are you actually offering me suggestions on how to take advantage of people?” Sam asked incredulously.

“No,” Dean scowled.

“It sounded like it.”

“I’m just trying to figure out why, if you are starving so badly you can’t think, you weren’t doing it on your own. Call it professional curiosity.”

Sam’s eyes narrowed. “I died, I didn’t lose all sense of morality. I’m not going to run out and rape someone!”

Dean stepped in closer, fighting an urge to deck him. “What the hell do you call what you tried to do to me!”

Sam had the grace to look slightly ashamed and mumbled something Dean didn’t quite catch.

“You want to repeat that or should I just start hitting you?” Dean growled.

Sam cleared his throat. “I said, you were watching me, and that chick said you wanted me. I just kinda... leaned on you. You were open to it and I didn’t want to be playing footsie all night when you just wanted to get off anyways and I was--“

“Starving,” Dean finished with a hard look. “But I wasn’t into you like that, so I wasn’t open to anything, jackass.”

“You were,” Sam insisted. “I didn’t mean like you were open to the idea, I mean you were open to it. To me. I can’t just mess with anyone off the street, there has to be something in them that I can... reach.”

“So you’ve tried?”

Sam wouldn’t meet his eyes. Dean snorted derisively. “Of course you have, Mr. ‘I’m-so-moral.’”

“You have no idea what this is like,” Sam repeated in a low, tight voice. “No fucking clue.”

“No, I don’t. Because I’m human. Start walking.”

“Have a nice, quiet spot all picked out for this?”

“I’m not going to kill you. Yet. We have something to discuss first.”

Sam turned so fast he almost lost his balance and had to grab a tree for support. “What the hell are you talking about? I think we’ve done enough discussing.”

“You want the people who did this to you dead or not? And I mean all the way dead, not this half-life crap you’ve got going on.”

Sam’s eyes widened, like he hadn’t put the two and two together of what Dean did for a living and what his little revelation about there being a whole group of things like him out there would mean for a hunter. Dean had to assume starvation really was screwing with his brain because that shouldn’t have been a hard leap for a smart guy.

“That’s what I thought. Come with me, keep your hands and your whatever to yourself, and we’ll see if we can’t bury the whole freaking lot of you guys together.”


Section Two