#samshinechester

The monster in front of him was wearing his brother like a suit. It didn’t attack, which was strange because all the monsters in Purgatory attacked. They were like rabid animals, baring teeth and claws and weapons, as if this washed-out world had stripped away all higher thought from them. That mindlessness made them easy to kill, and Dean never had to debate whether to kill them or not. It was the only thing to do here.

Dean looked the thing up and down. It was a sharp mirror that reflected everything about his brother from the floppy hair and broad shoulders to an expression of curious irritation, and it made him hungry with need for the sight of Sam, but not stupid enough to let down his guard. Plenty of supernatural things hid behind familiar faces - demons, shifters, ghouls, even Lucifer himself - and despite knowing they were monsters under all that, it was never easy to kill ‘em.

This one stood calmly, squinting its eyes against the grey brightness of Purgatory, watching for his reaction. When Dean’s eyes dropped to the blade in its hand, the monster sighed and sheathed it in a holster on its back.

“I had a dream about you,” Not-Sam said. “And look, here you are.”

When the thing took a step forward, Dean circled away. “Oh, you think this is funny, wearing a Sam mask? Won’t stop me from killing you.”

Not-Sam’s lips curled in amusement. “Well, it wouldn’t be the first time you killed me.”

Dean winced, and continued to move to the left. The thing’s appearance was identical to how Sam looked the last time Dean saw him, standing in Dick Roman’s lab, their eyes meeting for a split second when they thought they had won against the Leviathans. Before Dick began pulsing. Before Dean ended up here.

“You’re a Leviathan - one of our doppelgängers.”

Not-Sam gave an unpleasant laugh. “Give that man a cookie.”

“I took your head off once. I won’t have a problem doing it again. So, c’mon, what are you waiting for?” Dean faked a thrust and the Leviathan dodged away, but made no move to pull its weapon.

“I just want to talk. Nothing more.”

“Then do it, I’m not stopping you. I’ll just kill you in the end.”

“Dean–” It shook its head in perfect Sam exasperation.

“Don’t call me that.”

“Fine.” Not-Sam’s eyes tightened, giving a glimpse of the darkness underneath the Sam facade. “I keep having dreams. Leviathans take on memories. It’s what we do - assimilate your thoughts and clone your bodies - but we don’t dream.”

Dean thought back to everything he knew about the Levis. Brutal killing machines that worked together to “subjugate the weak”. He also remembered decapitating his own doppelgänger, while Sam was cuffed to the interrogation room table. Dean had no idea what kind of damage that thing had done to his brother in the few minutes before he arrived in the room. He could have been dead or injured. Instead, Sam heard about the one thing that Dean wanted to keep hidden. Their argument over Amy seemed foolish now, when he was trapped in this wasteland and would have given anything to see Sam again.

“The dreams,” Not-Sam continued. “Your brother’s memories have infected me, and now, I'm stuck in this form. And these memories of his…they're mostly of you, like a bad movie reel that plays over and over again. When I smelled you this morning, I knew this couldn’t be a coincidence.”

Bushes crashed open behind them, bringing Dean back to reality. Not-Sam yanked his blade out as a gang of three vamps descended. Vamps were ruthless killers at the best of times, but Purgatory made them frenzied. Could be they were all like this here, or maybe it was Dean and the blood that pumped through his body that drew them like mosquitos in a Minnesota summer.

Dean dispatched the first one, a young woman wearing a ratty white dress, and saw out of the corner of his eye that Not-Sam had thrown one of the two larger men down, face first on the deadfall before slicing its head off. The third one wasted no time in its attack on Dean. It knocked him off his feet, his lance falling out of reach. Dean tried to roll but the vamp had him around the neck, fangs bared, slavering for the fresh blood just inches away, when he was yanked off. As Dean sucked in a few deep breaths, he heard the crunch of the Levi’s blade shattering bone and the thump of the body thrown several feet away.

Dean stood up, and the two faced each other. Their attackers were crumpled on the ground, heads laying where they rolled a few feet away. Not-Sam sheathed his blade - its blade, Dean corrected himself - and swept its hair back from its face. It turned its back to Dean, and started to make its way through the trees before looking back over its shoulder a few strides later.

“Well, are you coming or not?” Not-Sam said, smug and certain. It began to walk away without an answer and Dean stumbled after it.

Following an enemy across unfriendly territory was a little too Aliens vs Predator for Dean’s taste, but he shook his head and trotted after it. Probably not a great plan, but it was better than no plan at all.

***

A small fire lit up the dark. The Levi had caught a rabbit on their way and it was cooking over the flame. The food in Purgatory was bland and tasteless - the berries were like styrofoam and the fish had no smell. It was a facsimile, like the barren trees and watery sunlight. God didn’t mean for humans to be here; it was all set dressing to taunt dead monsters with what they couldn’t have on Earth.

“Now, all we need is a six pack,” Dean said, rotating the rabbit a quarter-turn.

Not-Sam gave a half-amused chuckle, another echo of his brother. The Levi sat close to him and, despite the fights they survived or how many times the thing threw a look at him that he had seen a million times across the front seat of the Impala, Dean had to swallow down his urge for fight-or-flight, touching the lance he still kept close by. Not that it would do much good against a Levi.

Three days after that first vamp fight and they were still together. It least it felt like three days but Dean wasn’t sure, since that bleak sun seemed to be directly overhead. There was still no sign of Cas anywhere and no sign of an exit to get back home. It wasn’t all bad - the Leviathan was an unbeatable fighter and had saved his bacon on more than one occasions so far.

“Why?” he asked out loud.

“Excuse me?” Not-Sam crinkled his forehead, and once again Dean felt a familiar pang, of amusement, of loss. He didn’t know. Probably both.

“Why aren’t you killing me? You attacked me in that police station. You killed and ate all those people in the other world. Not that I complaining to still be alive, but I want to know why.”

Not-Sam squirmed for a moment, then looked into the flames. “Told you, I dreamed of you.”

Dean waited for it to continue and the fire snapped in the quiet.

“And no, we don’t dream - don’t even sleep, really - so I guess it’s more like flashbacks.”

Dean frowned. “No dreams at all?”

“What we pull from human memories is more like a data dump, easy to sort through them for what is useful at an objective distance.” Not-Sam exhaled in disgust. “But your brother’s feelings are messing with me. I can feel them, burrowing deep inside me, growing strong, and I can’t figure out how to get rid of them. Then I saw you asleep under that tree and I felt… relief.”

The Levi frowned and met Dean’s eyes, and the pain there was so much like Sam’s that he didn’t have any words.

“Maybe you can help me,” it said. “If I can’t separate myself from these memories and get rid of this infection, it’s going to get me killed. Us killed.”

***

The next morning they headed out, hiking across the tea-brown land with no destination in mind but Dean kept a lookout for signs of Cas or an escape route home. No more than half an hour had passed before they met the three Leviathans on a broad trail along the water.

Unlike the vamp attack a few days before, the Levis took more notice of his companion than Dean.

“Slumming it?” The monster who spoke looked like an older man, someone who could have been a CEO in the real world. “Playing with your food first?”

Not-Sam moved in front of Dean on the path. “Why don’t you just move along? There’s easier food to be found.”

The three Levis spread out and Dean took a fighting stance beside Not-Sam. When the others surged forward, he held one off, while Not-Sam made short work of the first two. The third one, the CEO clone, was quick as a snake and his blade grazed Dean’s cheek. Not-Sam sliced straight through its weapons arm, bringing the attack on Dean to a quick stop. When the CEO-Levi tried to step away from the two of them, Not-Sam fell on him.

Dean looked away as the monster hiding behind Sam’s face bared its fangs and real face with a roar, and fell on the other creature. He knew well the sounds of a Leviathan attack, but hearing those wet ripping noises and the inhuman way it moved from something that looked like Sam made him want to throw up. He moved further away from the scene, pretending to scan the area for other threats, but still keeping Not-Sam in the corner of his eye. Dean didn’t care about the other Levis who died - they deserved to be wiped out, driven extinct like the dinosaurs - but the sounds were enough to drive him mad. Looking out over the running stream, Dean wondered, not for the first time, how much longer he could stand it here.

After an eternity, the noise stopped. Not-Sam walked up and wiped its bloody mouth across the sleeve of Sam’s canvas jacket, color high on his cheekbones. “I feel so much better now.”

***

They barely spoke a handful of words the rest of the day, finding a small cove of rock to rest that night. Sleep didn’t come easy, the last legs of his adrenalin draining from Dean’s system. The Levi didn’t seem to notice. It rolled up its coat and placed it behind its head as a pillow, before settling in on the ground.

Now that Dean knew the monster didn’t sleep, he watched it with curiosity from a safe distance. Its eyes were slatted open halfway, and within a few minutes, the eyeballs underneath began to flicker back and forth, like an alien version of REM sleep. He remembered back to one of those lectures from Sam, where they were trapped in the car together for hours and would talk about anything to pass the time. This one was about sleep research, and how REM cycles were short but important - it was when your brain was learning and dreaming. Watching the flash of white beneath half-closed lids, Dean wondered what it meant for the Levi. Perhaps the thing was assimilating info from the other monsters it had fought that day, or maybe it was wresting with Sam’s memories.

Not-Sam moaned quietly and Dean moved closer to it. After years of sleeping no more than five feet from Sam, Dean had witnessed the pain of his brother’s nightmares and visions. In the past year, Sam had dealt with the hallucinations and fallout from his Cage memories. It broke his heart that the kid could never catch a break, and Dean had spent his whole life trying to protect and comfort Sam. Those sounds coming from this body triggered that same feeling in him.

The Levi seemed to become more agitated as time went on, and a sweat broke out on its forehead. The thing seemed sick, and Dean reached out to touch its skin, back of the hand, just as he did when Sam came down with a cold, when its moans turned into throaty growls. Its fingers began to flex at its side and Sam’s face rippled a few times. Dean skittered back, placing his back against the rock face, and keeping watch over the surrounding woods and the monster at his side.

***

The next few days were uneventful, and there continued to be no clues as to a portal that Dean could use to get back home, just more of the same desolate landscape and tasteless food. Not-Sam seemed to notice Dean’s withdrawal after its grisly meal and kept its distance, finding them what seemed to be a monster-free zone.

Another cave that night and another small rabbit. A small fire lit up the cave walls, and Dean almost felt at peace. The spot was easily defensible with clear running water nearby, and small openings at the top that dispersed the smoke from the enclosed space, so it wasn’t easily seen by others. He wondered if he could finally catch more than two hours of sleep that night. His erratic sleep patterns left him with an electric hum through his nervous system, and if he was going to survive this, he would need to find a way to turn that down.

He looked over at his companion, whose eyes reflected silvery-orange from the fire. It reminded Dean of the Terminator movies, except, of course, the Terminator didn’t sweat and moan in its sleep.

“How are you feeling?” The question bubbled up, something he would have asked the real Sam.

Not-Sam looked over at Dean, pausing before it answered. “Last night, while you slept, I beat off to a memory of the two of you together.”

“Oh.” Dean leaned away, his mouth open but the rest of the words were slow to come out. “But, do you even–”

“Sex? We don’t have to, but we can when we’re in your shape. Such a messy and useless expenditure of energy.” Not-Sam shook its head. “But, the problem is that it’s all I think about. The night before I saw you, all I could think about was our time together in the Carolinas. Remember? Dad left us in that little house on Hatteras Island without air conditioning. It was the first time–”

“Not your dad,” Dean interrupted. “He was not your dad.”

“Of course not.” It looked away, and then took the rabbit off the fire. Not-Sam preceded to split it into two skinny halves and handed one to Dean. A few minutes of silence hung in the air as they waited for it to cool. The meat was not as greasy as other rabbit Dean had eaten. Made sense that even the rabbits were tough in Purgatory.

He watched as Not-Sam picked neatly through its portion. It caught Dean’s glance and smiled at his curiosity, then licked off its fingertips.

“Normally, I wouldn’t even cook it. Just eat the whole thing at once, bones and all, but I don’t want to scare you again.”

“Thanks for that small favor.”

“It felt real, you know, that dream,” Not-Sam circled back, speaking as if to itself. “A really vivid memory. Your mouth on mine, tasting the melted butter from the crab we ate on the boardwalk, and the way–”

“Stop talking.” Dean stood up, shaking, his knife pulled. The memory of that weekend ten years ago was sacred, an important change in their lives. This monster might have access to those memories, but they didn’t belong to it.

“I get it, I’m not your Sam.” Non-Sam looked up at Dean and wound its fingers through Dean’s empty hand. It was the first time they had touched skin to skin, and Dean closed his eyes for a moment, satisfying a deep need for human touch that had been building for weeks.

The Levi looking up at him through Sam’s eyes, the same gaze that had held Dean in place all his life. He could almost believe that it was his brother. His time in Purgatory had left him exhausted and alone, still no options to get home. If he were a strong man, he would have killed this monster. But he wasn’t that strong. Dean couldn’t walk out and wander alone again across that brutal wilderness. He couldn’t walk out on Sam - or at least, this version of Sam.

A tug on his hand and Dean sank back down at the side of the fire. He had no ideas, no plan, on how to get back to his real brother. He might never see Sam again. Maybe this could fill some small hole.

He closed his eyes and dropped the knife. Long fingers removed his overshirt, dirty and stiff from the filth of this world, and threw it to the side. A hand cupped the back of his neck and Not-Sam leaned in to press its - his - forehead to Dean’s. Skin to skin, he felt the same. He even smelled the same as Sam. Dean waited, until Sam’s lips brushed against his. His eyes fluttered open to look into his brother’s eyes. Not Sam, he reminded himself.

The lips against his mouth were warm and insistent, as Sam’s soft tongue pushed between them, and Dean brought his hands to rest on those broad shoulders. The hand at his neck now pulled him backwards as he felt the Levi move next to him on the hard ground. He shivered at the thought of this monster wearing Sam’s face and memories, but it must have taken that as encouragement and draped his leg over Dean’s. He tried to make a noise of protest but it was swallowed up whole.

Sam moved to straddle Dean, and brought his hand to rest over Dean’s cock, rubbing the rough denim. “We need to get these off you.”

Never one for waiting, Sam’s long fingers made quick work on his belt and the fly, yanking them down to his ankles. Dean started to sit up, to pull his shoes and socks off but he was roughly pushed back on the ground. This was their thing - Sam taking charge because he needed it, that small moment of control to push back on life - and Dean had loved it. However, since his brother regained his hell memories, Sam had retreated more into himself and gave up control to Dean, an empty echo of what they had been like before the Cage.

Lying on this dirt floor, stuck in Purgatory with a monster and a half-hard dick, his desire to turn over control to Sam was strong.

Not Sam, he reminded himself.

Sam pushed him into the position he wanted and pulled Dean’s boots off. pushed his legs up, feet resting on the ground, with his jeans still pooled around one leg. His cock filled with blood as his knees were spread as wide as they would go. Sam’s lips traced a path up the inside of his thigh, and Dean moaned as the scruff lightly scratched at his smooth skin there.

“Wait,” he groaned. Dean reached down to pull Sam up, wanting a glimpse of Sam’s face, but his hands were pushed away. He grounded himself by tangling his fingers in Sam’s hair. Not Sam, he thought, trying to grasp at the reality of that and not lose himself in the soft path of kisses up his thigh.

The tongue and lips soon turned into small bites, and he swore that he could feel needle-like teeth sinking in. A spike of panic and want hit him in a wave that traveled from brain to heart to cock.

Sam looked up from where he was now licking the small puncture marks on Dean’s pale skin, murmuring shushing noises to him, before hooking his shoulders under Dean’s knees. He lifted Dean’s ass off the ground for a moment, before settling him back down again, arms wrapped tight around his thighs. Dean squirmed against the hold but the grip was like iron, which was why he was surprised to feel Sam kitten-licking Dean’s balls. The tease caused him to groan, and remembers nights of being pulled right up to the edge and back by that tongue. The licks became longer, moving soft and slow up the vein of his cock to the slit at the top. He could feel the build of orgasm in his balls, and he wanted to hold it back.

Dean choked down any protest as Sam swallowed him down to the root and his world narrowed down to this feeling. There was no escape from this place but there was this moment, so if he died, at least he died happy. Instead of pushing the monster off him, Dean grabbed onto the hair behind Sam’s ears and began to rut into the warmth of that mouth.

Another bubble of fear-lust rose from his core when there was a scrape of teeth on his cock. The feeling overwhelmed him and he couldn’t breath, with white spots sparked at the edge of his vision. His fingers scrabbled in Sam’s hair, once again beginning the desperate push-pull of his need. When cold air hit his cock once more, Dean looked down into the face he had known and loved all his life.

Sam’s lips were wet and pink around a toothy grin. “So good, Dean. You taste so good.”

Dean shuddered as that mouth sucked his cock once more, while the strong hands that were wrapped around his legs now slid under his ass, holding him up at an angle. One of the hands trailed back up to his balls, where those long fingers could knead and pull them. Dean’s thighs fell open even further and began to tremble in tension and relief, a sure sign the end was coming.

The humming sounds that Sam made (or was it a purr? Dean’s mind skittered away from the image of a tiger nestled between his legs) combined with the wet suction push him closer to the edge.

“Fuck, Sam, just like that.”

“Not Sam,” the Leviathan growled. “I need you to come. I need to taste all of you.”

Dean did as he was told, and the orgasm rolled through him with a shout, sparks of white like stars crowding his vision before he passed out.

***

Dean’s eyes fluttered open. The cave was still mostly dark, a watery dawn was coming in through the entrance. The fire was dying and Not-Sam’s face was lit by the glowing embers.

“Well, you’re finally awake,” it said, without glancing over.

Dean rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand. “How long was I out?”

“Four hours.” Not-Sam staggered up right. The Leviathan didn’t look well with a greyish tint to its skin and shoulders slumped. It grabbed its blade and slipped into the sheath. “What happened last night can’t happen again.”

“Wow, was it that bad–”

Before Dean could finish the joke, the Leviathan fled the cave.

“Hey, wait,” Dean yelled out to it, as he dressed and gathered his lance.

By the time he found it, the monster was a quarter of a mile away and weaving fast across the ground. Dean grabbed its arm and spun it around, not liking the easy way the Levi responded to his touch. The monster should be immovable, unstoppable.

“What’s your problem? Why are you running off like this?”

It didn’t look in his eyes. “Why do you care what I do?”

“I need your help.”

Not-Sam snorted and shook off Dean’s hand on his arm. “To find a way home? To get back to your brother?” It started to walk again and then turned on its heel. “And where does that leave me?”

The thing had the wide eyes of pain he had only seen on Sam during his stint of detox in Bobby’s basement so many years ago. Desperate and not all here in the moment. Not-Sam grabbed the side of its head, and Dean started forward to help.

“No, don’t touch me. You and your brother have killed me again, you know that?” It smacked at its temple with a finger. “I was fine before I took on his sickness. Now, this infection is running through my body, and it’s only getting worse. You made it worse.”

The Leviathan fell to its knees in a patch of pine needles and a growl came up from its chest. As Dean watched, Sam’s face shimmered out again, and the Leviathan’s fangs opened wide in a scream. One moment he could see his brother writhing in pain; the next, the monster underneath fighting against its own body and mind.

Dean brought his bone lance up and held it steady, and Not-Sam saw it and smiled. As Dean approached, the monster revealed its real nature, black and slick with a gash of white mouth, and snapped at Dean with the exhaustion of a rabid dog. Any affection from the previous night was erased, and sharp teeth caught on the arm of Dean’s jacket.

He stepped back, and Sam’s face was in front of him one last time. It didn’t raise its hands in defense or make any attempt to move away.

One swing of the bone lance and the clearing went quiet. Dean stepped around the Leviathan’s head on the ground to grab the extra blade off its back, and took one glance at the body.

Not Sam.

The same old man manned the register up front, his head bent over a biography of Kafka. Sam gave him a nod, which was received with nothing more than a quick flickering glance. He wound his way through the stacks of books - Historical, Literature, Poetry, Folklore. A title on banshees caught his attention. He might pick that one up on his way out.

His feet dragged to a full stop in front of Classics. A small mint-green paperback was wedged inexplicably between Ovid and Pindar, probably shelved by the old man in a rush to get back to the existential anxiety of Kafka. Sam pulled it slowly from the shelf and his smile widened.

“The Ancient Tradition of Geometric Problems”.

Jess rolled her eyes at the title when she saw it sitting on their coffee table. She was smart, had to be to get into Stanford, but she liked her classes to be more grounded - the feel of chalk and charcoal under her fingers, the play of light and shadow - not ruminations on ancient math and science.

She lifted her beer bottle, that cute little wrinkle between her eyes. “Incommensurable magnitudes? Really? C’mon, Sam, it’s Friday night.”

This book didn’t have the same layer of dust as the others, a new addition of an old title. He cracked the spine with reverence and leaned in, nostrils flaring a little at the smell of fresh ink and newly cut paper, so heady that he slumped against the bookcase. This edition was pristine while his own copy from that class years ago had been covered in highlighter pen and scrawled notes for conversations with Professor Singh, who appreciated Sam’s enthusiasm during Thursday afternoon office hours.

He slid to the floor to sit cross-legged, lost among the piles of musty books and his nostalgia. It burned in his chest, and flipping through the pages brought back all the small things Stanford had given him, a brief reprieve from monsters and death, an indulgence of discourse. But only too brief.

“Need any help?” the old man said. His frail figure towered over Sam on the floor, specter-like, and Sam sat up, embarrassed to be caught buried so deep in his own thoughts.

He wiped at his eyes. “Uh, no. I’m fine.”

***

Sam tossed the books on the motel’s dinette table, and removed his jacket as Dean stepped over to hand him a cold beer. His brother took a sip as he scattered the book titles out on the table.

“Banshees. Always a classic.” Dean pushed the first book to the side and then held up the thin mint green one, a smirk on his face. “Ancient science? You’re such a nerd. C’mon, Sam, it’s Friday night. Live a little.”