Archive of Our Own ^beta

Sam rolled the sixth ice cube around his tongue, took it out, and slowly reached behind himself. His eyes closed of their own volition, body betraying mind, but he felt his skin cool slightly and less like it was going to light the dirty motel sheets on fire. The cube melted.

He opened his eyes to grab another cube. Dean watched from the couch by the window, his eyes dark. Sam felt detached as he licked his lips and looked away.

“Sam.”

“Don’t talk to me.” His voice came out gruffer than he thought.

Dean got up, strolled over with a finger hooked in his back pocket, stood by the bed where Sam was sweating under the covers. His mouth was tugged down at the corners, unhappy, and he was uncharacteristically hesitant as he held out a nondescript pill pack, old-fashioned fabric and ugly turquoise.

“You still have a couple left. Take them.”

Sam grabbed an ice cube from the pail. Put it in his mouth. Rolled it before taking it out, looked up defiantly. Tried to slide it into his ass with his brother watching. Failed again.

“I need to phase it out. If I suddenly stop taking them cold turkey, it’s going to be too much.” He sounded smart. Clinical. Sam wasn’t a dumb omega ruled by hormones. He was smart about the way he came off his illegal medication. He wanted to throw up, preferably all over Dean and his face.

“You haven’t taken them for the past two days already.” Dean looked like he did the first day Sam started taking the illegal pills, the day Dad came home with a white paper bag and dropped it into Sam’s hands. Dad—the uncertain word had rolled off Dean’s tongue, as Sam turned his hateful gaze over to Dean and snarled, daring him to comment any further.

Sam wished he had retained that sixteen-year-old’s ability to snarl and bite and chomp, not necessarily at Dean but maybe at the world. “Need more space than that, Dean. Two more days. Then the intervals will be four, six, eight.”

Then his heat.

Dean carefully placed the pill packet on the dressing table. He started unbuttoning his shirt, a blue plaid one from a Wal-Mart two states back, before changing his mind and rolling up his sleeves instead. “Turn over,” he said.

Sam choked. The sixteen-year-old’s hatred returned after all and maybe Sam could snarl again, let a lion’s roar rip for all to hear, but at the same time the command went straight to his dick and he wanted to roll over, fucking roll in the sheets and rub his scent everywhere. Let Dean take him.

Instead he said, “Fuck you,” and threw up all over Dean’s shoes.

It was a testament to how much he was scaring Dean that Dean didn’t flinch. Instead he held Sam’s hair, muttering something about clippers and needing five minutes in the bathroom. When Sam’s retching died off, he waited a second before dragging Sam up by the hair. This time Dean didn’t ask, simply took Sam’s shoulders and rolled him over, pressing him into the mattress with one hand.

Sam felt something enter him, tiny and barely intrusive. The cube slicked its way inside his hole and then melted in a matter of seconds, draining all the way inside and leaving a trail of coolness that felt so good he shuddered.

“Can’t even masturbate straight,” Dean said, right above him, as his fingers took another cube and fitted it inside Sam again, a little gentler this time. “It was pathetic watching you.”

Sam wanted to say fuck you. He wanted to say thank you. He closed his eyes instead. “Knew you wanted my ass badly.” He smiled for the first time in two days when Dean snorted above him.

“This is the weirdest fucking shit I’ve done in my life.” Dean pushed two cubes in at the same time, and Sam felt his hole stretch just a tiny bit at that, the flesh giving way so achingly like it wanted, and felt both desire and panic spike at that feeling.

“I’ll do it for you later. Then you can see how it feels yourself.”

Sam expected another smart-ass comment. He was startled to feel Dean’s lips on the back of his head, pressing a chaste kiss into the messy hair.

“We’re looking again tomorrow.” Dean rested his hands on Sam’s hips briefly, before moving away. “We’ll drive to Cali or something. They can’t have wiped out all omega medication in this country. Hell, we’ll go to Canada, Mexico, if we have to.”

“Okay.” Sam turned his head so his brother couldn’t see him cry. He really, really didn’t want his older brother driving around the country in search of heat suppressants for him. The idea was more humiliating than the phantom sensation of Dean’s finger lingering at his hole, gently inserting ice cubes from the shabby machine down the hallway into his ass because his body was heating up and he couldn’t take it.

Part One: We The People

It started with Kansas.

“Omegas are required to be under the supervision of at least one alpha over the age of majority at all times.” Sam looked up at his brother across the plates of eggs and pigs-in-a-blanket. “What the fuck?”

Dean shrugged. “They refuse to let teenagers into bars,” he said. “Teenagers get into bars all the time.”

“That’s not the point,” Sam said, pissy. “The matter of enforcement is less of an issue than the unconstitutionality of this new bill.”

“College boy thinks he’s so smart,” Dean said, his mouth stuffed full. “Why’s it matter to you, anyways? We’re not there, and you have fifty different IDs, man. ‘S not any worse than the times we got into bars with fake IDs.”

“The times you did,” Sam shot back, but finished the article in silence. There was a class action being brought in the District Court for Kansas. He handed the newspapers over to Dean so he could glance over sports and look for a job, and thought of the missed Stanford law school interview and Jessica’s grave.

Only two people at Stanford had ever known that Sam was one of the rare omegas, a male breeder: Jessica, and an older woman professor who had an omega son, who had lain a hand on Sam’s arm and told him about how she had been one of the first woman allowed to enter university and it gets better, Sam, but only if you keep fighting. But Sam wouldn’t have been a civil rights lawyer, anyways, so he was helping a lot more people by being a hunter than a lawyer.

Even saved the son of a bitch once or twice, Dean had said, referring to their world and its people, and Sam reached for his coffee. He wouldn’t have stayed as a rich actor, either.

::

He first began losing everything outside of Virginia.

The line to get through the toll gates were long, Sam hated vampire nest hunts anyways, and under the May sun it was hot and sweaty and Dean refused to turn down his music. The sapphire-blue M5 in the next lane was playing Kanye West really, really loudly, trying to compete with Dean’s Megadeth. Sam wanted to skin both of them.

When there were three cars left in front, Dean suddenly sat up, alert. “Well, fuck.”

“What?”

“Seems like they’re doing fingerprints.”

“At the state border?” Sam squinted at the goings-on under the shade of the toll booth, and yeah, the driver held his hand out through the window and placed it on a black box that the booth attendant was holding. On the other side, the other occupant was doing the same thing. Sam briefly wondered if Dean had mistakenly driven to the Mexican border or hell, maybe District 9.

“Well fuck,” Dean said again. He was smiling, the tight grin he wore when trouble was raising its head for the Winchesters (he wore it often). “Think they’re hooked up to the FBI database, Sammy?”

“No,” Sam said, slowly. The Impala inched closer to the booth and he could see better what was going on. Dean wouldn’t know; Dean never had to go through this. “Dean, that’s not—those are not fingerprints. That’s an omega detector.”

Sam could feel Dean staring at him from the side, but he grabbed the box in the glove department, sorting through all the different IDs. Why the fuck did he have so many alpha IDs? Why were all the FBI badges, SSN cards, random government bureau agents (bikini inspector, haha, so funny Dean) saying alpha?

Sam had never thought about how much he passed for an alpha in his daily life. He didn’t think it was intentional: it was just more convenient to use something he and Dean could swap, and alphas usually held the higher-up positions in law enforcement. And there weren’t that many omegas to begin with, and it would only call attention to themselves to flaunt that he was an omega.

The Impala was next. Dean tapped the steering wheel. “We gonna make a run for it?”

Sam spared a brief moment of amusement at how serious his brother was: that for them, running from border patrol was a viable option. “If we get pulled over, and they try to go through our stuff,” he decided. Fake IDs were the least of their problems once they popped open the trunk. “I’m religious with my suppressants. Depending on the quality of their machines, they might not pick up on the hormones. It might be fine.”

“All right, little brother,” Dean said, and drove up to the booth.

The attendant was a woman who looked bored, a cap on her head with a pony tail and an insincere smile as she held out the box to Dean. Sam rolled down his own window to find a male attendant doing the same. He blinked at the box. The little space where his finger fit through was transparent plastic, but the machine itself was dark, ominous, and Sam couldn’t see exactly what it was meant to do.

“Your finger,” the attendant prompted.

Sam had the best poker face out of everyone he knew, which included Dean I-earn-my-living-hustling Winchester. It didn’t stop him from starting when the needle darted out and pricked his skin. Before he could blink, the drop of blood was taken from him, irrevocably.

So much for that plan, Sam thought as he drew his hand back, heart thumping. Hormone detectors were weak, but blood just couldn’t be mistaken that way. He got ready to signal to Dean to step on it, eyed the bar in front of the Impala and calculated how much force it would take for the car to break through.

“Alpha,” the woman from Dean’s side called out.

“Omega,” the attendant said. He nodded towards Dean, who was peering around Sam. “Make sure you know the regulations,” he said to Dean, speaking over Sam’s head. He waved the car through.

Dean drove in silence for a few minutes. Sam was frozen in place because he wasn’t sure what to think. Finally, Dean turned to him. “What the fuck?”

“They’re just making sure that omegas are accompanied,” Sam said slowly, shaping the words as he tried to make sense of the tilting world. “That was all it was.”

Dean’s finger circled the round on-off button of the Impala’s sound system. “That’s not too bad, I guess.”

That night when Dean pulled up to a motel, Sam got out and went with him to the office, too agitated to stay in the car. The clerk behind the counter was an old man, grizzled and white hair spouting around his mouth. Sam found a vending machine in the corner and tugged at it, trying to persuade it to take his crumpled bills that he filched from Dean’s stash, while behind him Dean flashed his smile and his credit card. “Room for one night, two queens.”

“ID,” the man said, mixed with the sound of swiping cards and clicking on the computer.

Sam turned around with a can of Mountain Dew, just in time to see the man hold out a black box and Dean’s eyes flicker to him. He calmly poked his finger through, but Sam knew all his ticks and quirks, and saw the way Dean subtly leaned towards his way.

The box beeped, and the man took it back. “Him too,” he said, nodding towards Sam.

“Seriously?” Sam asked, before he could help himself.

The man didn’t look at him but there was a slight roll of his eyes. “Mhm,” he said, somehow conveying omega with those two syllables, and put the box away.

Sam longed to whip out his FBI badge, maybe, and put the man in his place. He longed a little more to punch his face. “Government-issued ID not good enough anymore?”

“Only a temporary measure, they said,” the man said, the leathered winkles in his face folding themselves again and again, winking in Sam’s direction. “Too many omegas protesting. Once they get over it, this won’t be necessary.”

It was only when he felt Dean’s hand gripping his arm that Sam realized he was about to punch the counter. He drew back, took a breath, and shook his brother off.

“Control him,” the man said, and turned away, sitting down to watch his TV.

“Oh, I will,” Dean said, and it was the voice he used in late nights inside bars when things were getting ugly. “But not because your fucking ugly face could use some reconstruction, because man, it really could. You’re not worth the scratch on my brother’s fist. C’mon.” He tugged Sam out of the office.

Sam tore his arm out of Dean’s grasp once they were outside. “I don’t need you fighting my battles,” he snarled, then winced at how girly he sounded.

Dean stared at him like he was crazy. “Dude, we always fight each other’s battles. Being back-up for each other is our job.”

“Not for this,” Sam said.

“Yeah-yeah,” Dean said. He began walking towards the Impala. “Wasn’t sticking up for you, princess. He really just wasn’t worth the time.”

Sam stood in the heat and wiped his mouth. The warm air stuck to his skin, sweated its way through his pores and into him like a corruption.

Part Two: Exceedingly Persuasive

The Equal Protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment meant there could be no discrimination on the basis of gender, unless there was a legitimate interest in protecting society and keeping citizens safe. If the purpose was exceedingly persuasive. After all, there were real and biological differences between an alpha and an omega.

ACU v. Kansas held exactly that. Kansas government’s argument, the court thought, had been exceedingly persuasive. It went up on appeal to the Tenth Circuit.

In the meantime, Louisiana, Mississippi, Utah, and North Dakota joined Kansas and Virginia. Dean took long detours around six states without saying anything and blasted music as loudly as he always had done.

Sam kept a running tally in his head: six, then seven, then twelve, and one day he woke up and the number thirty one stared at him in the face, in the snaking highways that Dean drove to circumvent the wall of Midwest America before he slammed on the brakes by a remote lake in Tennessee and threw his hands up.

“We can’t ignore all of them,” Sam said. He was a little offended that Dean was frustrated. “We have to go through them.”

“I don’t want to.” Dean sounded all of six years old. “They’re fucking annoying, the lines are long, I lose like two liters of blood going anywhere, and I swear I’m going to get HIV from all those needles.”

“I’m not exactly seeing an alternative here, Dean,” Sam said. That was about all he could say because if he opened his mouth to say anything he wasn’t going to stop shouting until his throat gave out.

The sunlight reflected prettily off the surface of the lake.

::

The Congress solved the problem for him.

Sam picked up the forms in Illinois, where the police dogs barked at him nonstop and it was painfully obvious what he was doing when he carefully extracted the pages from the wall. The officer pulled on his dog awkwardly and didn’t look at Sam in the eye, pretended he didn’t know Sam was an omega out and about without his alpha.

He slid the forms across to Dean over dinner.

“What’s that?” Dean’s fingers were covered in ketchup and he spoke with his mouth open, showing all the medium-rare burger in his mouth.

“Custody forms,” Sam said. “I can either be mated or be placed into custody.”

Dean didn’t touch the forms. “Is that really necessary? Dude, it’s not like we use real names to begin with.”

“I need an omega ID,” Sam said. Technically, there was no such thing. There were only alphas who had little stubs showing the omegas in their care. The Omega ID Act and the federal omega registry made taking care of omegas across the country very easy and convenient (exceedingly persuasive, yes, it was congruent and proportional).

There were 71 employment cases being filed around the nation. Omegas were being fired left and right. It wasn’t making that much of a splash; there weren’t that many omegas to begin with.

In the Tenth Circuit, Stanton v. Kansas upheld the district court’s decision. To the Supreme Court they went.

::

Ken was the last name on Sam’s contact list and he was all the way out in Massachusetts. With the tri-state finally succumbing, Sam didn’t have much hope of getting to the state without a fuss, but Dean was out checking their PO box and his omega ID would be in his hands soon.

“Ken, hi,” Sam said when something clicked on the other side of the phone. “This is Robert. I spoke to you last March about some O.S. pills. I bought a year’s supply?” he added, when the other side stayed silent.

There was a puff of air. “Yeah. I think I remember you. You the really, really tall dude?” Ken laughed a bit. “Don’t matter much. I don’t have any supplies.”

Tiny ice specks were crystallizing in his arteries. “Ah, man. I don’t need them right away. I can wait, if you need to wait for an order.”

“No. It’s.” Ken took a deep breath. “All my suppliers have been rounded up, man. They’re all facing charges or in jail. I don’t think is possible anymore, Rob.”

Sam kind of knew that. He kind of knew it when all his contacts—established since he was sixteen and the suppressants first went illegal—were gone or missing or scared to death. He kind of knew it when New York and New Jersey and Connecticut had joined the rest and the number count became fifty or zero, depending on which side.

“Good luck, man,” Ken said, sounding sincere. “Everyone’s hoarding, everything’s gone. It’s safer to get meth than it is to get those suppressants nowadays.”

Sam hung up. He put his head in his hands. He stayed that way until an hour later, when Dean walked in with the IDs in hand.

He counted the pills he had left while Dean took painstaking copies of his ID, made measurements, and checked for any chips. Dean didn’t say anything a he started doing the same to his new alpha ID, but Sam read the regulations. The omega ID had Sam’s photo and his height and his weight, but Dean’s name was printed larger than his.

“I can’t use that,” Sam said when Dean began inserting Sam’s photo into an alpha ID. “There are dogs everywhere, even without the blood testing. I can’t pass for an alpha. And I’m running out of pills,” he added, almost like an afterthought.

Dean didn’t look up. “Just in case,” he said, and finished his work in silence, working the hot glue expertly on the plastic.

::

Sam found new things to count when Pennsylvania came up with the omega collar.

“It’s a small victory,” said the man who represented some non-profit-or-another said earnestly, looking into the camera. “But a victory nonetheless. With the chipped collar, omegas will be able to travel by themselves, go for errands without their alphas.”

VICTORY FOR OMEGAS, the caption read below his sweating red face in the east coast summer and the reporter holding a microphone to his face. Neither was an omega.

“That’s a victory?” Sam asked, blankly.

Dean made an incoherent noise beside him. “Would you like a chipped collar, Sammy?” he asked.

That did it.

Sam grabbed the laptop on his bed and threw it at the TV in one smooth movement. They shattered. Dean shouted something, but Sam swirled around and kicked the bed, knocking down beer bottles. Glass broke everywhere.

Strong hands closed around his shoulders. “Hey, Sam, Sam, Sammy, calm down. I was kidding, dude.”

Sam shoved him away as hard as he could. “Fuck this,” he snarled, more fiercely than even the angriest sixteen year old inside him.

Dean stared at him with huge eyes. “Is it the hormones?” he asked, a beat late.

That did it. For the second time.

Sam punched Dean as hard as he could. And again, when Dean tried to get up. The third time, Dean tackled his legs and both of them went down, Sam hitting his head on the bed really, really hard, but he didn’t let up his hold on Dean’s neck as he flung punch after punch. Dean gave back as good as he got, and his punches landed on Sam’s back, his face, his head before one got him really, really good in the eye. Sam didn’t stop.

It was a long time coming and maybe both of them knew it from the beginning. Maybe it had been inevitable from the moment Sam had woken up, wet and sweaty, that summer when he was twelve and Dad had taken him to a walk-in clinic by Wal-Mart that morning, and Dean had trailed after them, stayed in the waiting room, and ruffled Sam’s hair when he came back out. Maybe it had been inevitable the moment the bundle of cells that was Sam paused inside their mother’s womb and glanced outside at his older brother who would turn out alpha, and decided, what the hell, he was going to be an omega.

Part Three: Real Differences

Dean fucked him in Oregon.

Later he fucked Sam in all other states, too, but he fucked Sam in Oregon for the first time. In Portland, where the water was clean and the food locally grown and the garbage eco-friendly.

Sam timed his intervals so well, he could count down to the second when his heat began. In the middle of the day, standing under the cool clouds of the West coast sky, he calmly walked into the next hotel that he saw and checked in. Dean walked behind him, bewildered, carrying his bag and flashing his ID whenever needed, huffing by the time Sam got out of the elevator, slid the key into the door knob, and crawled into the bed to die.

“Sam. Sammy.” Dean’s fingers coasted the covers, and even that was beginning to be torture because okay, Sam hadn’t ever felt like this before and it felt like his entire blood was going to boil out of the pores of his skin. “You okay, Sammy?”

“Fuck off,” Sam said. He pulled back the covers just enough to glare at his brother, the cool air-conditioned air hitting his face. He went to shove Dean out of the way for good measure, but his fevered hands faltered in the air when he saw the bewildered look in Dean’s eyes. Sam didn’t accept or acknowledge that Dean would never know what this was like: it was just that the futility of it all hit him, hard, and underneath it the fear rose up like mist in the morning, pervasive, letting Sam know that if Dean didn’t understand this, if Dean could choose to do this or to not do it, Sam couldn’t do jackshit about it anyways.

Dean did fuck off, but mostly because there was a knock on the door.

“Do you need any towels, sir?” Sam heard a woman’s voice ask pleasantly.

“Uh, yeah, sure.” Dean cleared his throat. “Thanks, but I think after this, we’re going to need a little privacy.”

“Omegas,” the maid said, happily. “They’re just adorable, aren’t they, I keep hearing—”

Sam heard Dean shut the door to her face, and felt the bed dip a few seconds later. Dean’s hand patted in his general area as the sound of the TV filled the room. “Towels? They’re fluffy.”

“Fuck off,” Sam said, he was sure he said, laughing at the antics of his brother. But really he kicked off the covers, pulled at his clothes with trembling hands, tore at the collar at his neck before giving up because he couldn’t figure out how to work the hatch, a whine desperately rising in his throat as he rubbed helplessly against the soft white sheets, on all four as he dropped his head, breathing harshly. Presenting to his alpha.

Dean was completely silent behind him. The TV turned off. “Sam.”

No, Sam wanted to say. No, just fucking leave me alone. “Fuck me,” he said. “Fuck you, fuck me, I can’t do this, I can’t do this, I can’t do this.” A sob escaped from his lips, burst out like it was nothing, like it wasn’t the last of his pride escaping. The last of his choices.

Dean kissed him before he mounted him. Carefully fit his lips around Sam’s, gently led moans out of him with his tongue before he murmured it’s okay. Fit a finger inside Sam, rubbing and moving in and out before inserting another, another, then finally lifting his body and fitting his entire length over Sam’s. Entered Sam in a long and hard and hot thrust, breaching past his walls. And Sam couldn’t believe how hard he was, how inevitable he felt, not giving an inch as he took everything inside Sam.

Dean’s hands fit around Sam’s throat, tore away the collar. It didn’t matter. Sam remembered the cool metal coiling around him every time he lifted his cheap cup of coffee to his mouth; the memory stayed with him as Dean dropped kisses on the back of his neck, even as Dean said, in a strained voice, “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” and slammed in one last time, coming. His hips gave tiny thrusts, like he couldn’t help it, trying to get further inside Sam, make sure he reached as deeply as he could, even as he rested his forehead on Sam’s back, whispered sorry sorry Sammy I’m sorry.

Stuck between his body and his brother’s body, Sam remembered the first pills that came in a pretty orange container with abbreviations and science words written all over the label. His brother had sniffed down at him, and Sam felt the nose on his back just as clearly as he saw the younger Dean roll his eyes at him, “Should have known you’d be an O, bookworm,” and his lips pulled back just as the younger Sam had snarled “I can still beat you in sparring,” and okay, he couldn’t, not yet, but he had been working on it.

Sam remembered not minding it. They still swapped the same books from the library, Star Wars and Vikings and The Outsiders, and he even finished them faster than Dean sometimes. Dean looked over his homework as often as he beat the shit out of him, to make sure that Sam was smart but that he could also kick ass.

He remembered Dad laughing at him the first time he insisted on picking up the pills by himself because Dad always joked with the pharmacist and made him feel embarrassed. He remembered Dad didn’t laugh when he dropped the white paper bag on Sam’s lap, and Dean taking one look at the illegal substance before turning to Dad and himself snarling at them both. He remembered learning to find the pills on his own when he went to Stanford. He remembered applying to Stanford and Jessica and his feminist professor with an omega son and the American life he was going to have.

He remembered being him back then and he remembered now and he’s not sure there’s a difference, he’s sure he’s choking on the dick that’s still inside him, growing and growing all the way through his stomach and to his throat, squeezing his windpipes and making sure he doesn’t get enough oxygen.

He remembered the beautiful boy who sat next to him in the Impala through all fifty states and the beautiful man who drives him and fucks him. Who’s not as smart as him but who can kick ass, who’s trying to do everything to help him because Sam’s his brother. And he wants nothing more than to be that man, with his normal eyes and normal arms and normal legs, and to just fucking stop belonging to the flesh that their mother gave him. Crawl out of his skin that’s stopped listening and become a wraith in the air because really, there’s nothing connecting him anymore, not his world or his family or his body.

And he feels incredibly, inexorably, so fucking lonely.