A/N: Setting is… sometime in season 10, and Dean's gotten rid of the Mark. Because I said so. Inspired by a song.
Whanger is slang from the 1930s. It means what you think it means. And old-timey slang is surprisingly funny.
Warnings: Wincest. Angst. Offscreen deaths (not the boys!) incl. mentions of suicide. Humor.
Disclaimer: Supernatural is not mine. I am making no money.
Cursed
The door slammed shut behind Sam. The window rattled with the impact, and a few flakes of plaster cracked off and fell onto the cheap carpet. Dean sat on the tacky bedspread in stunned silence for a few moments.
Well that wasn't on the list.
He'd come up with a thousand possible scenarios, from the pessimistic (Sam punches him and leaves and never comes back) and the humiliating (Sam laughs at him and never stops teasing him for the rest of his life) to the hopeful (Sam kisses him, and is somehow perfectly prepped and lubed and they fuck like bunnies) and finally the plainly ridiculous (Sam honks because he's suddenly the Impala again which is just awesome because dude—two favorite things in the universe rolled into one and the upholstery feels damn good on his dick while Sampala blasts Zeppelin and maybe he's put a little too much thought into this one). In every one of the thousand reactions, he'd never once imagined Sam looking stricken and running out of the room in the middle of nowhere, Kentucky, without his shoes or jacket.
Sure, he could have eased into the topic, but Dean's never really been one for pussyfooting around. And when he heard Sam having a happy dream (because these things happen when you live as close as they did, dammit) and moaning his name… Well. That told him all he needed to know. Sam wanted him too. So there was no reason they couldn't be together.
Except the whole brother thing. That was the only bit Dean was unsure on. But he was pretty sure that Sam had already gone through the whole 'Oh my god, I'm horny for my brother and that's gross and wrong' freak out bit. Dean had, months ago, when he finally realized that the eyes and lips and hair and hands (on god those hands) he was imagining in his most secret fantasies were real, and all belonged to a person who happened to be Sam. It had been a bit of a relief, really—calmed the sexual identity issue because now Sam's the exception to his hetero rule, and Sam's always been exceptional.
But besides the brother thing, there was no reason for them not to fall into bed and live out some of their fantasies. And so when they got back to the room, sore and aching after getting thrown into a wall (Sam) and a table (Dean) and a bookcase (both at once) by a ghost who wasn't really feeling the whole 'time to move on' thing, and then tearing up a brick patio so they could salt and burn the remains, Dean thought that the sensible thing to do was to offer Sam a nice, relaxing backrub. Sure, he added a bit about being naked and slippery in a hot shower, but that was no reason for the kid to…
Well. Maybe it's a reason for Sammy to run off like that. But it still sucks.
Dean was just about ready to pull his boots back on and go out looking for Sam when his overly-dramatic baby brother walked back into the room, arms wrapped around himself.
"It's okay," was what Sam said.
And Dean looked at him and said, "Sarghlbuwuh?" or something to that effect, he really wasn't sure, and he blamed the desperate look in Sam's eyes because Sam was hurting and that always erased the rest of the world.
"We'll fix this," Sam clarified. Except that that didn't really clear anything up.
"Fix what?" And that came out in English, thank god.
"It probably hasn't hit yet." He sounded like he was trying to convince himself. "It'd be best if we got out ahead of it—"
"Sammy, you're not making sense here. So slow down, and tell me what's going on?"
Tears welled up in Sam's eyes, and when whatever it was got fixed Dean was gonna give him hell for that. A month of teasing, at least.
"You're gonna die. Horribly. And it's my fault," Sam said.
"You're gonna have to give me a bit more to go on than that, baby boy." Dean shoved himself up off the bed, stepped towards Sam, almost broke when Sam stepped away.
"The curse!" Sam shouted. "The stupid curse!"
Dean racked his brain, trying to figure out what was cursed, what the curse could be. It might have been from that ghost—why else would Sam go from moaning his name to running away and talking about curses?—but Dean had been with him the entire time, and while that spook had certainly been strong it hadn't been magic. Well, not any more than a ghost already was. And there had been that coven two weeks ago, but they'd been strictly hexbags and violence. And Sam might be worried about Dean's impending doom, but they've been on the road, and packing and unpacking, and Dean's spent plenty of time under Baby's hood, so they'd have noticed if a hexbag were following them around. And before that…
The hunts blurred together in a long string of death and terror and exhilaration and Sam so beautiful and strong and wanting him so much but they really had to figure out this curse thing.
"Yeah, I got nothing," Dean said finally. "So what got cursed? And when?" If we're lucky, it's small enough to fit in a curse box, and we can dump it in the bunker and never think about it again.
"It's… you'll laugh."
"I promise, Sammy, I won't laugh. This curse is standing in the way of us getting naked?"
Sam nodded.
"Then I don't think it's funny at all. Tell me."
"I think it happened when we were kids. I don't know how, but something cursed my…" Sam closed his eyes and rubbed his neck. He sighed.
"C'mon, Sam, out with it!"
"It cursed my penis."
xxxxx
Dean laughed all night. Sam shoved him out of the room after an hour. He slept in the Impala, and laughed when he woke up.
xxxxx
A couple hours into the drive, Sam finally dropped the silent treatment. "It kills people. People I like. If they like me, too. Touch me. They die. And the more I like them, the sooner it happens."
Okay, this could be a problem. "Are you sure?"
"I've checked. I mean, a couple are coincidence, and kind of expected with what we do, right?"
"Right…"
"But it's not just a couple. It's dozens. Dozens of people that I've loved. And if they didn't die, they're going to. And they're miserable right now."
Dean fell silent, considering. Then, "I'd take my chances."
Bitchface. "With how I feel about you, you'd have a heart attack mid-coitus," Sam said, then went awkwardly silent, like he said too much.
Dean's heart sang. Yeah, it was girly, but this? This was confirmation of what he'd only just let himself believe, this was everything he'd wanted for the last few years handed to him on a silver platter. This was way too heavy, and he needed to lighten the mood, now. "Coitus? Nerd."
"Fuck you!"
"That's the idea. Soon's we get rid of this curse." Dean waggled his eyebrows and… yes, there it was. Sammy smile. The smile that could turn the Apocalypse into fuzzy kittens and rainbows. But it vanished quickly.
"I really don't like you talking like that."
"Sorry."
"It's not a joke. And I don't want it to kill you!"
It'd be "worth it," Dean mumbled, but he knew that Sam was right. And it wouldn't really be worth it, getting his heart's desire just to die immediately. Especially if he checked out before trying out all of his fantasies. Like the one where Sam's an FBI agent who just caught up to Dean Winchester, Most Wanted, and Dean has to seduce his way free. Or the one where they're sleeping in the car and Dad's in the front seat and they have to be so quiet so he doesn't wake up and catch them rubbing off against each other. Or the one with a bed of pies and Sam on top.
"Will you stop fantasizing!" Sam's shout broke through Dean's happy place.
Dean scowled. "I wasn't."
"You always carry a mini-tent in your pants?"
"Hey now. Don't get sidetracked by what I'm packing. Time for that later. We gotta solve this problem."
Sam sighed. "Yeah. I thought… Well, when I only wanted you, and there was no way you wanted me, it was safe. No one was gonna get hurt."
"I get it."
"Yeah."
"So walk me through it. You like them, they like you, then what?"
"Then… they die. I don't know what you want me to say."
"Let's start with how they die."
Sam let his head drop back. "It's always different," he said. "And it's not always right away."
"Okay. Let's start with the first."
"That was…" Sam hesitated, then shook his head. "No. Let's start with the easiest."
Huh. "Okay. Who's the easiest?"
"Madison."
"Werewolf Madison?"
"Yeah."
"The one you had to kill?"
"Yeah."
"She's the easiest?"
"Yeah."
"Well, shit."
"I liked her—could have loved her, maybe—and I slept with her, and then I killed her."
"Sam…"
Sam ignored him, plowed ahead. "And there's Jess. You know how that went. And Sarah. She'd still be alive if it weren't for me."
"Hey, you don't know that—"
"Yes, I do. It's what I've been telling you! Maybe not that day, or that week, or that year, but they die. Horribly."
"Amelia—" It hurt to say her name, to even think of the woman who took his place for however short a time, but she's a woman Sam loved and left alive.
"Dead. Car accident. I checked, Dean, as soon as I started thinking about—" Sam cut himself off, raking his fingers through his hair. "I used to think it was a coincidence, random bad luck, but it's not. And I won't risk you!" He turned away, staring steadily out the window. "Lori—Hookman Lori—was so messed up from what she saw that she hung herself. And the first was… do you remember Amy?"
Dean swallowed, pushed back the guilt. "Yeah, I remember. But you never had sex with her, did you?"
"No. Just kissed her when I was fifteen. Dreamt about her sometimes because I was fifteen and she was a cute girl. That was enough for the curse, I guess. And we can't forget Ruby."
"Yes, we can." Dean spat the words out.
Sam actually turned towards him, looked at him with soft eyes and Dean thought Sam was going to reach out but he stopped, went back to staring out the window.
Dean sighed. "Look, this isn't… Dammit, Sam, we've gotten through worse things! It's just a curse, we've seen that before. Worst case, we call Cas and have him whammy it out of you."
"You wanna call Cas and tell him that we want him to magic me so that we can fuck?"
Okay, so I didn't think that one out. "Yeah, maybe."
"Fine. You answer his questions."
"I said worst case. Not first."
Sam laughed. "Okay, so what's the first thing? 'Cause I gotta say, I am all out of ideas. I've searched through all the lore, and I can't find anything."
"All the lore? Bunker and everything?"
"It wasn't easy, but… Look, if it was you, and you were worried that you were gonna kill me because I don't know exactly how far things need to go—"
"That why you don't even jack it?"
"Dean!"
"Just asking. It's not healthy, you know. Backs up the works."
"Oh my god, stop. Just stop."
"Hey, I gotta know just how serious this curse is. 'Cause if a wet dream sets it off, I'm already doomed and we might as well have fun."
"I don't think that would do it, okay? At least, the couple I checked are doing okay. And yeah, Bela died, but she made her deal years before we met her. So she was already doomed."
Bela? "You had a thing for Bela?" That was news.
"You didn't?"
"She was evil!" And hot. And evil, dammit! Evil!
"She was immoral. It's different."
"Fine, whatever. But you agree that she didn't die because you were into her, right?"
"Right."
"Okay. So we can go with the idea that your curse only hits folks you get physical with."
"And love. Or like a lot, at least."
"Sure about that?"
"The girls I fucked when my soul was gone are all doing great."
"Well that's something, isn't it?" Dean reached out to Sam and put his hand on Sam's shoulder, trying to ignore the way Sam flinched, but… "Aw, c'mon, this isn't a sexual touch! I touch you like this all the time, if patting your damn shoulder triggers the curse then Sammy, I'm dead already."
Sam huffed out a giant sigh. "No, you're probably safe. I don't think my shoulder's cursed."
"Okay. So you went through the whole bunker—"
"Not the whole bunker. Just the relevant parts."
"Right. Because everything's filed perfectly in a sensible system." Dean patted Sam's shoulder a bit harder than strictly necessary. "I think it wouldn't be the worst idea to have another look-through. At any section your problem might be in. If it's under 'K' for 'kurse' because some idiot couldn't spell—"
Sam laughed, a genuine laugh finally. "You might be right. Can't hurt to check, at least."
"That's the spirit! So we'll just take a break from hunting until this thing is dealt with."
"Sounds good, man."
Fifteen minutes later, Dean asked if Sam had checked under "cock curse." Five minutes after that, "penis pox." Then "hammer hex." Then he started throwing out every ridiculous name he'd ever heard for a dick, because Sam made those adorable "I'm pretended to be pissed but I'm laughing inside" growls (at least, he thought that was what they were) and there was nothing more boring that driving through middle America.
An hour later, Sam said he'd hold out for a week after getting cured if Dean didn't stop with the penis names, so Dean turned up the music and grinned all the way to the bunker.
xxxxx
To Dean's surprise, they found a curse that matched Sam's symptoms filed under "Whanger Whammy." To Sam's surprise, the file stated categorically that no such curse existed, giving several examples of men who'd thought they were cursed and the reasons why they weren't. To Dean's disgust, it was a demonic spell, used by a yellow-eyed demon to monitor his "special kids," and make sure they didn't hook up with someone that old Azzy didn't approve of. To Sam's relief, it was a simple fix.
To Dean's joy, there was a bottle of lube in Sam's pocket. And Sam knew just what to do with it ("Seriously, research works. There's all sorts of info on the net, Dean. Now tell me how this feels," and Sam's fingers were doing something wicked and wonderful inside him and Dean maybe forgot how to talk).
To Sam's delight, Dean was a cuddler after sex.
"Only you, Sam," was all Dean said. But that was enough for them both.
The End
"I looked into his eyes/And let him sodomize me with his dick of death."
-Pansy Division, "Dick of Death"