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Another fight over, another innocent (if unsuspecting) life saved and they stumble over each other on the way back into the motel room. Dean shoves Sam and calls him a Sasquatch, Sam trips him in retaliation and they’re arguing over the first shower when Ellen calls Sam’s phone. “Hey, Ellen,” Sam says breathlessly, he’s still got Dean in a headlock but he breaks free while Sam’s distracted. “First shower, thanks Ellen!” Dean yells, pulling off his shirt as he slips into the bathroom. Sam rolls his eyes and Ellen yells at Ash in the background. He spreads out on Dean’s bed, too tired to sit up and too dirty for his bed. He’ll get up again before Dean comes out or Dean will make him switch. “Ash isn’t playing well with the others,” Ellen finally says into the phone, and now Sam can hear Jo in the background telling Ash about the myriad ways she knows to kill a man. Sam laughs a bit. “Have another lead for you boys, if you want to stop by,” Ellen says. Sam wants to ask if it’s nothing Jo can’t handle but that’s still something of a touchy subject so he says “sure” instead. “We’ll be by tomorrow, we both need some sleep tonight.” “Rough hunt?” “Sort of, ghost haunting a local farm. There were sheep involved.” “Vicious little suckers.” Sam laughs again. “When they want to be. We’ll tell you the whole story tomorrow. Dean’ll act out the sheep for you.” The water cuts off and Sam sits up quickly and moves over to a chair. “Can’t wait,” Ellen says. “Well, you boys get some rest then. Take care.” “You too.” Dean’s out of the bathroom a bit later and it wasn’t a long shower but it’s a crap motel and all the hot water is gone. Sam’s too tired to complain so he cleans as quickly as possible and crawls into bed. Dean’s already asleep. Sam listens to him breathe for a bit, the soft inhales and exhales of home. He doesn’t remember falling asleep. -- Sam never sees how Dean gets the drop on them. Years of dealing with belligerent angry drunken hunters and Dean gets all three, apparently in the first try. He’s there, at the Roadhouse and Sam doesn’t think to question it at first, how he got from their motel to the bar so quickly, and without Sam. Jo, Ellen, and Ash are trussed up, caught against the floor and the bar. Jo is crying, tears dripping down her face and soaking into her shirt, her bravado is gone, nothing left but a lost little girl and Ellen is pissed, face a mask of lines and anger and betrayal. The angle on Ash is bad but he mostly looks confused. Dean kicks back a beer; everything about him is casual and friendly. He drops down, crouches over them occasionally to lick at the salty tears on Jo’s face, to get in Ellen’s and whisper things that make her jerk against the ropes holding her down. He clenches his fist in the straggly hair hanging down Ash’s back and bites at his neck. He hears Ellen yell “Christo” and Dean flinches and there’s a sick ball of terror and panic in his chest because Dean is fucking possessed and Sam doesn’t know what to do. Then Dean takes out a cell phone (not his, and Sam wonders briefly where it is) and he’s on it, talking quietly as he kills them, three quick strikes across their throats. Sam wakes up screaming, head pounding, the pain behind his eyes says it isn’t a dream, it’s a vision. Blood and tears and Dean in his mind, behind his eyelids, and his scream doesn’t wake Dean up because (he sees when his hands stop shaking enough to turn on the lamp) Dean is already gone. The phone rings minutes later, as he slips his shoes on and opens the door and realizes that Dean has the Impala, the keys, their guns, everything. Even took his clothes and the laptop. Only left their cell phones because he must have guessed Sam would use Dean’s to track him. He answers the phone. “Hey, Sammy.”Sam would answer, would say hello back and where are you and why did you take my clothes? but the breathing is wrong, it’s not Dean. Dean’s voice, but it isn’t him. He lives his life to the rhythm of Dean’s breaths, he knows them by heart. Whimpers and bitten off curses in the background and fuck, it’s his vision come to life. Five minutes, that was all, why doesn’t he get any warnings anymore? “Don’t,” he says, and he knows it’s useless and futile. “Don’t what, Sammy, waste my little wanna-be girlfriend? Her mom? The drunken redneck? Why not?” “When the fuck did you crawl into Dean? Who are you?” “Twenty questions now? I am Dean.” “The hell you are.” “In all the ways that matter, Sammy, I am. Sam I am. Huh.” He laughs a little, Dean’s laugh but not Dean’s laugh and it’s all wrong. “I’m doing this for you, Sammy,” he says, “first Jo.” He can’t see it now, but he remembers. Quick slices and maybe, maybe she didn’t feel anything. Maybe it all happened too fast. He hears Ellen’s muffled shouts in the background, and Dean’s voice over everything. “Then Ellen. Then Ash.” Harsh breaths over the phone and Sam hits the wall so hard his knuckles bleed against cracked plaster. “Fuck you,” he grinds out. “Why?” “Three down,” is all he gets. He kicks the wall, hard enough that he feels stupid a second later, his foot throbbing. Why? Why now, why Dean, why didn’t he see it sooner? Soon enough to stop him? -- Sam limps out to the parking lot and he thinks he may have broken a toe but he doesn’t stop to check. He hot wires the old Camry in the space next to where the Impala had been and thumbs Bobby’s number as he drives towards the Roadhouse. He gets the voicemail. “I thought you said... You said these would keep... Jesus, Bobby, exactly how useless are these charms?” he says, a little breathless and a lot terrified and he doesn’t want to get closer to what he knows he’ll find. “Dean’s possessed. Don’t let him in.” He drops the phone in the passenger seat and digs Bobby’s charm out of his pocket. It goes out the window. -- Dean didn't move them. They're still tied up, together, hunched over against the counter, could be sleeping except there's blood everywhere, pooling underneath them and spread out under the tables. Eight times three is twenty-four pints of blood, a lake on the floor of the bar. The sharp copper smell is in his nose and the ends of his pants get heavy, soaking up everything he’s dragging them through as he crouches next to the bodies, his friends, and closes their eyes with heavy fingers. Their bodies are lighter, however much all the blood- the whole lake of blood that used to be in them, giving them form and substance- however much all that blood weighed plus Sam remembers reading something about the weight of the soul, twenty-one grams, and he wonders if there’s truth in that story. He digs three graves out back, shovel digging into loose dirt and gravel. He’s never done this alone before. Dean has, and Sam wonders if it felt this way for Dean when Sam was gone, but probably not. He sprinkles salt over them, soaks them with lighter fluid, drops three matches into the graves. He won’t give them a chance to become restless spirits, for them and for Dean. He thinks they’d understand. He sometimes forgets about the smell, and isn't his life weird, that the smell of burning bodies is something he pushes aside because there are more horrifying things occupying his memory. They mostly only waste ghosts that are old, far older than this, when there’s nothing left but bones and dry skin. It smells like the woods outside Salvation, like pain and lies and Sam gags a little, staggers away to get breathe fresher air. The Roadhouse is a beacon in his rearview as he drives away, flames licking up to touch the stars. -- He isn’t prepared for the next one (was he prepared for the first?). Blinding pain and the Camry spins out on loose gravel, ends up lodged against trees and Sam clutches his head, waiting for Dean’s fingers to wrap around his arms, for Dean to catch him when he slumps over the wheel, teeth clenched tightly against a scream. His hand stretches out and hits the passenger seat and he remembers that Dean isn’t there. -Because he’s standing over Bobby, broken and bleeding on the ground and Bobby is angry, so much angrier than Ellen was. Dean's so tall. Sam hasn't thought of Dean as tall since puberty, when Dean's hand-me-down jeans stopped fitting and Dad took him to the Goodwill and even if they'd been used before, they'd never been used by Dean. So he's stopped thinking of Dean as tall (even though he knows he is) but he’s huge, gigantic standing over Bobby before he crouches, knife across Bobby’s neck and the grin on Dean’s face is sick, spattered by blood. He’s on the phone again. Sam knows who he’s talking to. The vision fades and Sam tries to find his phone but the passenger window broke when the car hit the tree, the glass in intricate patterns over the seat and floor. His phone isn’t among the debris. Head still fuzzy from the vision and the subsequent trip into a tree, Sam fumbles with his seat belt, unbuckling and he starts struggling with the door before giving up and climbing out the broken passenger window. His phone starts ringing as he falls to the ground, panting, biting back a moan as the movement jars his head. His phone hit a tree, the face is broken but it still works. He answers. “Fuck you.” “Hello to you too, little brother.” “Don’t call me that. How’d you even-” “Get the drop on Bobby? I know, right?” He’s happy, giddy, and Sam thinks of werewolves and Disneyland. It makes him sick. “I can’t believe it myself. Can’t reveal trade secrets now, Sammy. You done burning your friends yet? So precious, cleaning up your big brother’s messes.” "Shut up." He pulls himself up, leans against the car, knees drawn up, his head resting against them, still pounding and he can barely concentrate on what the demon is saying. “Shut up,” he says again, because there’s nothing else. “Don’t think so. You have anything you want to say to Bobby? He’s right here.” “Just- You can’t-” “Oh, too late. Bye, Bobby.” A gurgle in the background, Bobby tries to say something as Dean kills him, he remembers. He’ll never know. “I’ll leave him right here for you. I know you’ll come to burn him. Four down, little brother. Who’m I gonna do next?” “You bastard.” “Don’t talk about my momma like that.” Sam can hear the shit-eating grin over the phone line, the empty space between them, sees Dean’s face still covered in Bobby’s blood and he leans over to vomit in the grass. “Aww, sick, Sammy? Want some soup?” “Shut up. Shut up,” he says, voice rasping out his clenching throat. “Now I will, but we’ll talk again.” The line goes dead. He scrolls through his phone list, looking for other hunters, other people to warn that Dean may be coming, but there aren’t many. They work alone, have always been alone, just Dean and Sam and Dad against the ghosts and the spirits and it’s always been that way. Except for Bobby, except for Ellen and Jo and Ash. He finds a few names and starts to call the first and thinks about Gordon, about trip wires and Dean’s muffled shouts. The only people he could trust not to tell anyone else are already dead and he doesn’t want anyone hunting Dean but him. Doesn’t trust anyone to hunt Dean but him, to have Dean in mind and not the demon. He puts the phone down and part of it feels like hope but most of it feels like giving up. Eventually he drags himself to the highway and flags down a passing car. He doesn’t know what to tell the guy when he asks where he’s going, where he’s been, how he got out there without a car. “Drop me off at the next town,” he says, slumping against the window. -- He still has some of Dean’s credit cards in his wallet and he stops to buy underwear and a change of clothes before he steals another car, another point against his karma and he thinks he should quit keeping track. Bobby’s house isn’t far. His body is right where the demon left it, a smiley face drawn in congealing blood on the wall above his head. Something inside Sam twists and breaks and he stares at the face, blood streaking like paint down the wall, and it’s just like a million times before when they were kids and Dean would breathe on the window of the Impala, draw faces in the condensation to make him laugh, remind him that he’s not alone. He wants Dean more than ever, wants him to come in like the calvary, like John Wayne and make it all better and even though Sam is old enough to know it doesn't work that way, it never really stopped feeling that way. And that’s it, isn’t it? Dean has always saved him and now, now it’s up to Sam and he has no idea what to do. No one he can call. The body is heavy and Sam staggers under the weight as he drags him out back, digs another grave and it’s hard to think he might get used to this before the end, cleaning up after Dean. He always figured it would end up being the other way around. “Bye, Bobby,” he says, choking on the ash and flame. The house is still the organized mess that Bobby kept it in, too many notes, papers, secrets filed away to have any kind of order. Bobby knows- knew- more about demons and possession than anyone else they knew, but the demon knows that too, and Bobby’s journal is a smoldering mess in the fireplace, nothing left to salvage. Sam lights a fire to Bobby’s house too. No sense in leaving anything that might trace its way back to Dean. He takes Bobby’s truck, another cache of weapons and some holy water and he thinks Bobby wouldn’t mind. -- No more visions so Sam gets a room for the night in the cheapest hotel he can find. Tacky decor, but he isn’t there for the aesthetics. He showers, ash and soot and blood mingling together in the drain, all that’s left of Bobby. All that’s left of Ellen and Jo and Ash. He scrubs at his face and he’s tired, so tired and he doesn’t know where he left his life. He’s about to face plant into the pillow when his phone rings and the display still doesn’t work but he answers it anyway. “Just called to say goodnight, Sammy.” “Stop calling me that.” “Why? Only I get to call you that, remember?” “Not you.” “Oh, I’m in here, Sammy. I’m still here.” And for a moment it sounds so much like Dean, and for a moment Sam closes his eyes and wishes. But the demon speaks again, twisting Dean’s voice and Dean’s mind. “So I’m guessing you didn’t find it.” “Find what?” “Bobby knew a lot about us, you know. He devoted his hunting years to demons, demon possessions. You people like to have specialties.” “Dean and I don’t.” “The ever-present anomaly, yes I know. Regardless. I burned Bobby’s journal, couldn’t leave anything obvious laying about. I still have the Key of Solomon, silly of you boys to leave it in the car all the time. It’s so mobile. But I left you a clue, Sammy, if you were smart enough to look. Too bad you were too broken up, had to burn poor Bobby and his house. Didn’t want anyone to find my fingerprints, did you? Wanted to make a clean getaway.” They’ll lie, they’ll say anything, and everything black and violent and vile in Sam churns in his stomach and “NO” isn’t enough but it’s all he can think to say. “You could have had me out, Sammy. You could have had Dean back, always, never another problem. Too bad you burned it.” “No. You. Why would you leave that?” “It’s a game. Do you know how long eternity is? You can’t kill me, whatever you do. So we’ll play a little game, Sammy, and we’ll see who wins. ‘Night!” The phone drops to the ground and it feels like the hospital corridor all over again, the coffee cup landing perfectly upright at his feet. He has no context for how to deal with this, no experience in this kind of world at all. He thought he could sleep. He thought he could burn Bobby’s remains, steal his truck, and then check into a motel and catch forty. He doesn’t always have the best ideas. He knows he should get up, get dressed, hit the road and find Dean and Dean has always been the person that gets him moving, gets his head out of books and research and all that thinking he does, carefully planning every move. Dean runs in, guns cocked and it’s all action first, thought second. Maybe that’s why Dean found him so quickly last time. You can’t out think a demon. -- Hours later. He can’t tell if he slept but there’s crap in the corners of his eyes, so maybe he did. He sits up slowly, wincing at sore muscles from digging four graves in one night by himself. Dean’s always been there to spell him before. He’s about to get up when he realizes that he doesn’t know where to go, where the demon could be, who he’s going after next. He lays there, lets his thoughts wander and they go to Bobby, to Ellen, to Jo and Ash and he gets up because he knows if he lets himself, he’ll drown in that sorrow and he can’t, he has to find Dean. He’s showered and he skips breakfast because he isn’t sure his stomach can handle food yet. It’s a small town but they’ve got a local library with internet connections. Sam doesn’t really know where to start without his links and his research notes but he types “demon possession” into google and works from there. His eyes ache from staring at the computer through the constant sharp migraine and his stomach rolls again. He leaves the computer, heading for the bathroom. He’s just inside the door when it starts to hit him and he sits so he doesn’t fall. Another room, another hunter’s home and Sam can see him, pressed against the wall and Dean’s knife at his throat. Another phone in his hand. Sam only met Joshua once, years ago, bigger than life because he was taller than Dean, taller than Dad. He’s not that big anymore and when the demon slits his throat he falls to the ground and he seems so small. His face is pressed against the cold tile, head pounding and he pushes himself up, grabs in his bag for the aspirin he bought last night but he knows it won’t help. Nothing helps but time and he isn’t getting enough. The phone rings and he sits against the wall, feet braced against the trash can and his head cradled on his knees, heavy and defeated and it won’t do any good to rush there, the demon will already be gone. “Haven’t seen Joshua in a while, have you?” “Dean-” he cuts himself off too late. “Told you! Told you I was Dean!” “You are not. You’re nothing like him at all.” “I’m more like him than you’ll ever know. Do you think Dad’ll be happy to see his friends in hell? Misery does love company.” “He’s not-” “Oh he is, but you didn’t know that, did you? Dean never told you. Your dad’s been there all along, Sammy. And now Joshua will join him.” He’d say no. He’d say don’t. But he’s said them before and none of it does any good. He doesn’t say anything and there’s the sound of a body hitting the floor. Joshua, looking small and broken and dead. “Five down, Sammy. That's a lot right? It's not enough. Not yet." Sam doesn’t answer, just breathes into the phone and prays, maybe, begs for this to not be happening. “Sam? Sammy? You still there?” A deep breath. “What?” he bites out. “Do you think he’ll say hi to Dad for us?” The demon is still giggling when Sam hangs up the phone. Joshua’s home is a couple of hours away but there’s no need to hurry. He grabs cold pop tarts and a questionable cup of coffee at the gas station on the way out of town and he wonders about hell. About where his dad is and what kind of deal Dean made and he adds that to the list of questions he will beat out of Dean if he has to. Someday. -- Time passes. Days, maybe a week. He doesn’t want to think about how long he’s been doing this, how many phone calls the demon has made, how many people Sam’s watched die. Six down. Ten down. Twelve down. Friends, people he hasn’t seen since they were taller than him, since he and Dean fought over shotgun and the last s’more over a campfire. Hunters, all of them, even if he didn’t know that then he can certainly tell now and he knew Dean was good, good at surprising, good at trapping, good at killing, but he didn’t know he was that good. He doesn’t know if he should be proud or not, if it’s Dean that’s good, or the demon. The next time the demon calls he has to bite his tongue so he doesn’t ask. -- Middle of the night when the phone rings again and Sam had just fallen asleep, Leno over and the wet bar pretty much exhausted. “Sam?” The voice is frantic, worried, but the breaths are right and for a minute Sam can’t answer, can’t even think. Dean. “Sam, you there?” “Yeah, yeah. God, it’s good to hear you. How’d you-” “I didn’t, he’s still in me, squatting like a bug. I can’t. Sam, you have to come get me. You have to find a way to kill me. I don’t care what it takes, I can’t keep doing this.” Not gonna happen, Sam thinks but doesn’t say, they can fight about it later. He sits up quickly, already pulling on his shoes. He’d never gotten undressed. “Where are you?” But the breathing changes, subtly, but just enough and Sam knows. “Woo! He’s a strong boy. You didn’t think it was that easy, did you?” He kicks his shoes off, throws them against the wall and the neighbors holler and it doesn’t make him feel any better. “Damn it, why are you doing this?” The demon laughs, and it’s Dean’s laugh and Sam doesn’t want to hear it. “Do I need a reason, Sammy? Slaughter is a pastime, a means to an end, a pleasant way to while away idle hours. Finding meaning in slaughter is a useless exercise, you know that. Dean could tell you that.” The phone bites into Sam’s hand as it clenches, a silent protest. “Don’t talk about my brother.” “But I am your brother, Sammy.” “No you’re not.” “He’s still in here. You know he is. Oh, he doesn’t like me. But I like him. He’s so dark, so many dark delicious places in here. I could play in here for years.” “You won’t. I’ll get you out.” “Oh, oh Sammy. That’s precious.” “I’ve done it before.” “Not me, you haven’t. My little sister, my little brother, maybe. But I’m smarter than they are and I’m holding all the cards.” A long sigh, and the breaths aren’t right, too harsh, too fast, Sam can’t put his finger on it. He wants to hang up but he wants to see where this goes, he wants Dean again. “You remember, Sammy, that town we were living in that last year of high school?” He drops to the bed, fight gone for the moment. “With the pixies,” he says. “Oh, you’re playing along? Yeah, damn, that was funny. There was this counselor at school. She was pretty hot, had a little thing for Dean. Wanted him to apply to college, said he had the grades. So he did, just to shut her up and because after he did she let him fuck her over her desk. Did he tell you that?” “No.” He remembers Dean back then, a younger, slightly happier version of himself but he was never carefree, never believed he was immortal, that nothing could touch him because he was young and alive. Nothing like the other kids. “I did. He got in, Sammy, did he tell you that?” “No.” “Dean could have gone to college. Done something with his life. Had something to turn to when the inevitable happens. But he didn’t, Sammy. You know why?” It waits for a response, breathes along the phone line and Sam listens at how wrong it is, how different and he doesn’t answer, doesn’t say anything because he’s tired of this game where the word that comes to him first is always ‘no’. “He didn’t want to leave you alone.” And then Dean’s voice drops, sly and slick and disgusting, “Isn’t that sweet?” “It’s not true,” he says, and wishes he could think of something else to say, something beyond the constant theme of denial, some way to attack instead of defend. But he’s tired and it’s right, it knows the game and he doesn’t. “But it is, that’s the best part!” It sounds really excited, killing Bobby excited and Sam’s gut rolls again. “You were so young, only fourteen. Too big for your own skin and still falling over yourself and getting in fights with Dad every other day. Who knew what trouble you’d get into with me watching out for you?” “I could handle myself.” But he remembers that too, walking it off with Dean after another brutal shouting match, as far and as fast as he could from the trailer they’d rented in the small town they were squatting in and Sam never talked after those fights because he was always afraid he’d cry instead. He couldn’t cry in front of Dean. Dean walked with him, rarely ever spoke but he’d put his hand on Sam’s shoulder and it was just when Sam was starting to get taller than Dean, he’d reach up and he’d squeeze the muscle there and say I’m here. “‘Course you could. You don’t need him, do you? You’ve got your own back, Sammy. What he does for you, it doesn’t mean anything to you, does it?” “I didn’t say that.” Did he? All the talk about going back to school, about killing the demon and going back to his life, is that what Dean heard? “You don’t have to. You know, four years later when you got into college? He never believed you’d go. Up until the day you left, running away while he and Dad were out? Man, that’s cold. That’s gratitude, Sammy. That’s love.” Cold knots form in the pit of his stomach, sick and queasy and he might throw up. They lie, sure, but they’ll tell the truth just to fuck with your head. “You don’t know anything.” “I do. I know so much more than you think. So much more.” Sam hangs up but it isn’t soon enough and he wonders how much Dean will remember, how much Sam’ll have to apologize for, explain, ask about later. -- Sam's had a migraine for three weeks now. The visions never seem to end, one after another as Dean- no, not Dean, the demon- kills everyone they've ever known. Thirteen, fourteen down. The fifteenth person isn’t a hunter. Different motel, different city, but the pain behind his eyes is still the same when it hits him, knocks him to his knees on the tile in the bathroom. Mike. They saw him the last time they went home, the first and last time Sam ever saw his mother. Big mechanic’s arms, he’s strong in that ‘beat your ass in a bar fight’ way but he doesn’t have anything on Dean, on the demon. Mike still doesn’t even know who Dean is, doesn’t see the little boy he gave ice cream to in the middle of the night when he woke up screaming about fire and death. The phone rings. “Sammy, you remember Mike? He changed your diaper a couple of times, when Dad was too drunk to do it himself.” “Mom had just died, asshole.” “Oh, name calling, Sammy? For that you don’t get to say goodbye.” Another slice, another thud, and it’s sick how routine all of this is beginning to be. “Why Mike?” he says, swallowing down protest and bile. “He wasn’t even a hunter.” “You didn’t think this was only about hunters, did you? This is about you, Sammy. You and me here. Just wanted to get your hunter friends first before they caught wind.” “There are other hunters, other people who could find you.” The demon snorts. “I don’t think so, Sammy. You didn’t tell anyone. Dean knows you didn’t tell anyone, and let me tell you, that tastes sweet. You could find me if you really wanted to find me, but they couldn’t. You and Dean, you ran with the best and the brightest, you know? Heads of the class, all the smart kids have to stick together.” “So the rest of us are too dumb to find you?” “The rest of THEM, Sammy. And I didn’t say it, you did.” It’s like talking to Dean sometimes, and what does that say? Does the demon sound like Dean? Or does Dean sound like a demon? “Fifteen down.” -- He waits to burn Mike. Civilians like to find their loved ones, to bury them and let them be at peace, as much as they can. Lots of blood and a missing body would stir up more trouble, and he can’t burn the house with Mike’s family inside. Can’t leave it though, victims of murder make restless spirits, hunters or not. He attends the funeral. Watches Patricia, Mike’s widow, sob and cry and grab hold of their mostly grown children. Watches them lower the casket into the ground. He doesn’t remember Mike, not really, except for their one trip home. Dean knew him better, knew what flavor of ice cream he preferred, told him about watching Mike’s big TV, which was way bigger than their old TV, up way past bed time because there was a lot Dad didn’t care about in the beginning. He digs Mike’s grave up that night, salts and burns his body, says goodbye for him and for Dean. -- Later that night, new hotel, new shower, and he’d washed the dirt from the cemetery off when the phone rings again. He knows who it is, no one else calls him anymore. “You still up, Sammy? How was the funeral?” He doesn’t have the energy to be angry, to be sad and when he’s tired enough, numb enough, he can almost pretend he’s talking to Dean. “Fine.” “I’m really beginning to enjoy our late night chats.” “Yeah, me too.” “Don’t lie to me, Sammy. I know you better than anyone.” “You don’t. Dean does.” “Not so, young grasshopper. I know you. You think we don’t watch you? You think we don’t watch all of you? The special children, yes, blah blah plans I could honestly care less. The hunters, though, we love watching you. Like a big soap opera.” “You just killed off half your cast.” “Yeah, they’ll be pretty pissed for that, but this show is so much better. Point is, I know you. So does Dean. And I know him.” “Following that convoluted logic-” “Both of us in here are big fans. I have another secret for you, Sammy. Want to hear it?” “No.” “Yes you do. Lying again, Sammy, how does anyone ever trust you? You’ll want to know this. It’s about Jessica.” Years and hearing her name can still get to him. He sits up, a hot rush of pain and anger and fire in his chest. “What?” he says, tries to say, but his mouth is dry. The demon hears it, knows and there’s glee in his voice, probably a fucking song in his heart when he says, “Dean was glad she died.” “He wouldn’t-” But the question is there, which is all it wanted in the first place. The rush turns to more cold angry stones in his stomach and he wonders why every conversation leaves him wanting to puke. “Oh, he was sorry you hurt. But you think he really wanted to leave you there? To drop you off and say goodbye?” “Of course not, but he knew I wanted-” A life. Law school. Something Dean wasn’t in, couldn’t touch, somewhere he couldn’t follow. He’d chosen his life and Dean wasn’t allowed. The stones in his stomach are heavier, weighing him down into the mattress and the scratchy sheets. “You’re really not that naive? Really?” He’s disappointed the demon and he can’t tell if that makes him happy or sad. “Maybe you are. He hated her, Sammy. He hated her for taking you away from him. And when she died he danced inside because you were angry enough to come with him again. Got you back in the car, didn’t it?” “You’re a lying son of a bitch.” “You should really stop bringing my mama into our little conversations. She’s your mama too.” -- The demon calls him every time. Cassie welcomed him with open arms. Sarah asked where Sam was, before a look in the demon's eye had her backing away, attempting to shut the door. Seventeen down. Twenty down. Twenty-four down. Visions bleed into reality and the only way he can tell the difference anymore is that he can never reach Dean in time, can't put out a hand to stop him, to help whoever it is on the wrong end of a hunting knife. Can't warn them in time. Sam attends some of the funerals, not all. He can’t look in Cassie’s mother’s face and tell her it’ll be okay, that he’s sorry. He digs up a lot of graves and burns a lot of bodies and he never gets caught, no one ever roams the graveyards the way he and Dean do. Pain sharpens behind his eyes, images playing across his retinas, frolicking children with a maypole of barbed wire. A face he recognizes, another door opened to Dean because Sam can't remember everyone they've talked to and his phone list only gets him so far. Another person dies. The vision fades, blood and death replaced by ugly wallpaper, another hotel room Sam can't afford to waste time in. His phone rings and the sound batters against his eardrums, sharp and shrill. "Missouri," he says, doesn’t even wait for her to identify herself. Her face in the vision, her death he just witnessed. "Dean-" “He's coming for me." "You know, right? Get out of there.” "I can't run, Sam. I've seen it; I've known all along he was meant to be my end. I never saw the where or the why, but I understand that now. But I want you to tell him." “Tell him what?" "That it isn't his fault, sugar." "He'll never buy that." "It doesn't matter. He just needs to hear it. Sam? You won't have to burn my bones. Don't come here. I'm not holding on to anything. I've known for so long, I've made my peace." "Missouri, wait, wait, I'm coming to you. We can stop him." "There's no time, he's already close. Very close. You want to know how this will end, but I can't tell you. It isn't written yet. Listen, will you do me a favor? Call the authorities. Tell them where I am. I don't want to sit around here for days, decaying in the heat. I want to be beautiful in my casket." "I'll do it-" "You're going to say you're sorry, and I'm going to tell you that it isn't your fault either, but you won't believe me any more than he will. Look out for each other. Remember you're all you've got." "But we can-" "You should know by now there are some things you can't change, no matter how much time you're given. I knew the minute John introduced me to his boys, but it never changed anything. I love Dean like I love you, and what's coming isn't him. Remember to tell him, Sam." Sam can't form words anymore, mouth open on a silent wail for all he never knew, and in the quiet he hears the demon coming, opening the door in Missouri's house. "You tell him," she says, and hangs up the phone. Another hole driven into another wall and maybe the skin on his knuckles will never come back. Who's left? Who's left to lose? Soon the answer will be no one. No one but Dean. His phone rings again. “Missouri?” Mocking laughter and he clenches his hand around the phone. Anger, hatred are a knot in his chest. “You. Fuck you. WHY?” “What a potty mouth. Me, Sammy. Did she call you? She really is a psychic!” “Shut up. Just shut up! You knew she was.” He tries to breathe around the knot and it’s so hard. He’s gasping and he doesn’t realize he’s crying until the tears hit his hand, clenched around the phone. She knew, she’d known all this time and even then, they couldn’t stop it. Sam wouldn’t be able to stop it. Nothing he could do, no way to help Dean. Useless and futile, all he can do is follow after, clean up the demon’s messes and wait for the end. “Maybe,” the demon says. “People get lucky all the time.” His breath hitches when he speaks, he can’t hide the tears. “She was real,” he says quietly, because it matters. “Aw, are you, are you crying, Sammy? That’s so sweet!” Sam hangs up the phone. Familiar routine. He calls the non-emergency line in Lawrence, gives them a fake name and Missouri’s name and address. He can do one thing right tonight. He stares at the ceiling till sunrise. -- The phone rings again late in the morning, a chirruping song from the front seat of Bobby’s truck and Sam answers, eyes still on the road. “Yeah?” “Sam?” “Dean? That you?” He jerks the wheel to the side, tires skidding as he stops on the shoulder. “Yeah. This is hard, I can’t do this long. You have to find me. You have to kill me if you can’t get this out of me.” “It won’t do any good. We pushed Meg out a window and the demon held her together. The only way is to exorcize it.” “Find a way, Sam. I can’t do this for much longer.” “Where are you?” But again, as before, his breathing changes and the squatting evil thing inside him takes over again. “Still not gonna tell you that, Sammy. It’s not time yet.” “Are you. Are you letting him take over?” The demon chuckles but it doesn’t answer and it doesn’t matter anyway. Sam punches the dash, knuckles cracked and already bleeding. “Why? Why are you doing this to Dean and not me?” “You know what, Sammy? I like you. And I’m really going to answer. You’ve been done. Your brother loves you, he loves you so much it’s disgusting. He loves you so much that you could kill everyone in the world, everyone, Sammy, and he wouldn’t blame you. He’d try to stop you, sure, just like he did before, but blame? He’d only blame himself for not stopping you. For not stopping whoever is possessing you. Funny how the human mind works.” “So you make him feel guilty.” “Oh Sammy, it’s so much more than that.” He giggles and Sam’s stomach rolls, lead butterflies and maybe a second visit from breakfast. “He’s not just hurting other people. He’s hurting you. He’s making you worry, making you cry, making you clean up the messes of your friends that he leaves behind. Well, not that last one, the psychic, but still. It’s coming, it isn’t over yet. And Dean will never forgive himself for that. Isn’t this fun?” “You’re sick.” “Nope, I’m demonic, boy. And guess what? I’m coming after you now.” The demon hangs up before Sam can and he sits in Bobby’s truck on the side of the road, sun shining through the windshield onto his bleeding hands. A car passes, the first he’s seen in hours, and it jolts him, knocks him out of wherever he was. He’s outwardly calm and collected as he gets out of the truck and grabs the tire iron from the tool box in the back. He grips it tightly, like a baseball bat, like Dean taught him years ago on a sandlot in some small town and he’s anything but calm, anything but collected as he lets it fly against Bobby’s truck, driving hard dents into the side of the bed. Each time he connects it sends a ripple of pain up his arms into his shoulders and he grits his teeth and keeps hitting, keeps going until he can’t anymore, until the tire iron falls from his fingers and he drops to his knees on the side of the road. He rests his forehead against the truck, his skin catches on a jagged hole and his tears, unchecked, drop from his chin to soak the dust at his knees. -- It’s hard to run when he doesn’t know what’s behind him. Where it is. And he runs because he still doesn’t know how to save Dean, how to get it out of him, if it’s even possible. And if it all adds up to make him feel like a cowardly piece of shit, he ignores it and drives on. Small town in the panhandle of Texas, they all look the same after a while. Big enough for a 7-11, too small for a Wal-Mart. He checks into the first motel he sees, lays down the credit card. He walks across the street to the gas station and spends the last of the change he found in Bobby’s truck on a bottle of coke and a pack of gum. The girl behind the counter smiles at him, she’d be interested if he gave her half a glance, but he’s pretty sure any part of him he could give to her is broken now. He nods, gives a half smile, all he’s really capable of, and leaves the store. He sees her again that night, vision pounding against his eyes and it’s quick, the demon doesn’t bother to taunt her first, play it out. Doesn’t even call Sam when it kills her, like it doesn’t care who she is, she’s just another number to add to the total. Like all life isn’t precious. Dean is there when he opens his eyes and it’s so familiar for a minute that he falls into Dean’s hands, it’s such a huge fucking relief to see him and he wants to tell Dean about the horrible dream he can’t seem to wake up from, but the hands tighten around his arm, then around his neck, and the headlights of a passing car cross his face and it isn’t Dean’s face. Or it is, but not his expression at all. The demon’s on top of him, pressing him into the bed and cutting off his air and he grabs at its wrists but it’s stronger than he is. He bucks up, trying to throw it off but it moves with him and laughs a little, a lot, before it bends over him, hands tight around his neck, knees tight against his hips. “You saw her, huh?” it says, face down next to Sam’s, harsh breath, a rhythm that isn’t Deans, against his neck. “Her pretty face. You could have bagged her, Sammy, I’m disappointed in you.” It sits up a little, hands still locked around his throat but it’s face is above his, mouth brushing against Sam’s face when it asks, “More notice than usual, isn’t it?” like it expects him to answer. Shit, it hasn’t killed her yet. He pulls at the hands on his neck but it’s getting harder. His chest is tight, stars in his eyes and he wonders if this is it, the end, if its going to kill him now and leave Dean alone. He struggles harder at that thought, but it’s too late. “Good night, Sammy,” it says, as his vision goes black. -- Pounding on the door wakes him up the next day, a grouchy voice telling him to leave or pay for another day. He leaves. He catches a glimpse of the bruises around his neck in the rearview as he climbs into the truck, a memento of his first face-to-face with the thing that’s been occupying his brother’s body for weeks. (Months? He wishes he could remember.) He drives up into Colorado, no plan, no destination. He wants to get away from the girl, from the demon, from the pain and the guilt and not knowing what to do. He’s still running. He stops for gas once, waits in line for the men’s and lets a guy with two antsy kids go ahead of him. The guy smiles in thanks and Sam just nods. Another small town and he only stops for the night when he can’t drive anymore for his eyes shutting. He’s afraid he’ll nod off completely and end up in a ditch. Another crappy motel with cheap carpets and hard pillows. He doesn’t remember going to bed. He sees the guy (but not the two kids) in a vision that night, it’s all becoming sickly and sadly familiar. He’s up and out the door before the vision really fades and he thinks that’s why he doesn’t see the demon at first, Dean’s body lounging casually against the wall outside his door. He’s up against the wall, the casual gone and taut lines replace it, pressed against him, all along his length. Dean’s arm is against his neck, elbow pressing into the bruises from last night. “Going somewhere?” it asks. Sam looks up, away, anywhere but at this thing twisting Dean’s face. “Thirty-one down. That’s a lot, right?” The light’s beginning to waver and it might be the lack of oxygen, but Sam’s pretty sure it’s tears. “Is that enough to make Dean a mass murderer? What’s the cut off for that?” Sam looks down at that. No, he mouths around gritted teeth. “What was that?” It grins, delighted to be acknowledged and Sam looks away again, up over its head and he’s never been happier to be taller than Dean, to be able to look away without effort, because it’s getting harder and harder to move. “He used to be angry in here, Sammy. He was so angry at first. I loved that, it felt good. He’s not angry anymore, but it’s okay. I like this better.” His vision blacks again but before it goes completely he sees the demon twisting Dean’s face into a grin, a horrid, fake, unreal grin. It’s the last thing he sees. -- Tapping on his foot wakes him up. A policeman is crouched at his feet. “Were you mugged, son?” He sits up quickly, he doesn’t want to talk to this guy, to talk to anyone, to even look at someone. They might be next. “No.” “What happened at your neck there?” “Fell down the stairs.” The cop sighs, stands up and looks down at him in that disapproving way every law man seems to have. “All right, you want to press charges against the stairs, you let me know. You smell clean, just stay out of trouble.” Sam wants to laugh, but he doesn’t. -- On the road again, down into Arizona. He likes the western states for their big long stretches of open road, nothing around for miles and no one to see. He checks the rearview compulsively and he keeps expecting to see the Impala, keeps expecting the demon to show up, to run him off the road, to finish it somehow. Maybe it’ll be up to him. He doesn’t want to think about that. He stops way past nightfall in a tiny town, so small they only have one motel and Sam almost drives on when he catches a glimpse of the tiny grandmotherly type behind the counter. He tries not to look at her, he tries not to talk to her, but it’s hard to check into a motel without doing either. Maybe it’s the bruises he didn’t bother to hide. Maybe it’s the circles under his eyes, broken skin on his knuckles, the way he sways against the counter with the effort to remain upright. She notices something and presses her hand to his cheek. He looks at her, right into her eyes, and she smiles. “This too shall pass,” she says, thumb stroking along his cheekbone. Sam pulls away, leaves the key on the counter and stumbles out of the office. No, he thinks. NONONO. He knows who’s next. He sits in the truck all night, a little away from the office. Close enough that he can stop the demon when it shows up, far enough away that she won’t see him out there. He tries, he tries so hard to stay awake, to not doze off in the long hours as he watches her move around the office, pick up the romance novel she’d been thumbing through when he came in. The door he’s leaning against is wrenched open and he’d fall out but the demon catches him, shoves him back inside and holds him down while it ties his hands to the wheel of the truck. Just holds him, one-handed, and Sam can’t tell if he’s really that close to the end of his rope, or if the demon really is that strong. “Try getting out of that one, kiddo,” it says, beaming at him, face inches away. “She’ll be thirty-two. Just one more.” It leans forward a bit, kisses him on the cheek before it pulls back and shuts the door. He pulls, yanks against the ropes holding his wrists down but they’re too tight. He gets his teeth around one of them, tries to pull it out of its knot and it might come that way, but not soon enough. He’s still pulling on it, working on it when he hears the rumble of the Impala as it drives away and he looks up, through the office window. The pool of blood spills out the door. He’s too tired to cry anymore, though he would, even though he didn’t know her. He rests his forehead against the steering wheel for a few long moments and doesn’t think about anything, about the demon or Dean or the last person it’s going to kill. His mind is empty and blank and free and he tugs at the last knot on the rope, gets his hands free. He starts the truck and drives away. -- He’s on the side of the road before the next one hits. Another face he might recognize if he bothered to look anyone in the face today, another person sacrificed to the demon’s need. She’s blond this time, pretty and Sam says Jessica, and he knows he didn’t see her. He’s holding his phone, waiting for it to ring, still sitting on the shoulder of the road. It rings. “Thirty-three, baby brother. I’m so done.” “Done?” “Yeah. Done. That’s a good number, right? Look it up, Sammy. It’s got all kinds of symbolism, since I know that’s your thing.” “I know.” “You’ve been running from me. Don’t you want to play? I’m coming for you now, Sammy. Not just for fun this time. It’s time we finished this. I know where you are. You know I do.” And he does know, of course it can. He still has the bruises to prove it. He braces himself. He’ll never be ready. -- It catches him again in New Mexico, some tiny little town off the map that Sam can’t remember the name of. Doesn’t knock this time, just unlocks the door and it must have charmed the clerk into giving it the spare key. “I’m home, sweetheart,” it says. Sam tries to make a break for it but the demon has Dean’s gun so Sam doesn’t fight (too much). The fewer memories Dean has later of forcing Sam to do anything the better, and the demon seems disappointed but Sam isn’t about to give it the pleasure. It gets him in the Impala and it’s weird and wrong that something else is driving, that something else is in their car. It looks over at him, at the disgust and anger on his face and it laughs a little before it punches him once, twice, knocking his head against the window and Sam blacks out. -- Awake again, he’s strung up against a wall, hands above his head and his feet tied down. The demon is in front of him, on its knees and cutting his pants off and Sam hopes this is something Dean won’t remember later. It doesn’t cut him deep at first, just little nicks on his arms and legs and one longer one across his belly. Enough that it stings and burns and blood drips into little pools, but nothing that won’t heal on its own and Sam wonders what’s next, disgust and fear and worry a cold knot in his belly. “How well do you know Dean?” it says, smirk on Dean’s face that isn’t his. “I know everything.” “Oh?” it says, delighted with the answer. “Everything?” “Everything that matters.” It gets up in his face then, presses tight against him and its breath (Dean’s breath) gusts over his cheek when it speaks. “You know everything, huh? Everything that ‘matters’?” Hands on his chest, Dean’s blunt fingertips digging into his ribs. The knife cuts into his side, the cut is deeper than the ones before. “Do you know that Dean wants you? Does that matter? I don’t mean he just wants you around now, Sammy, I mean he wants you in the Biblical sense. Beast with two backs and all that.” He presses forward, lips grazing Sam’s ear as it whispers “your brother wants to fuck you, Sammy.” Sam jerks against the ropes, turns his head but there’s no getting away, no shutting him up. “He doesn’t.” “Oh, he does. I do. I wake up in the middle of the night, Sammy, and you’re right there, in the next bed, warm and soft and sleeping and I get hard, thinking about you, about your tight ass and those miles and miles of skin.” It’s got the knife against his throat, making cuts, one after another into the skin and it leans forward to lick at the blood that spills down his chest. “Nothing to say, Sammy? No innocent protestations?” It leans back and bats its eyes, voice high and mocking. “He does not! How could you ever say such a thing!” Slick grin and its eyes narrow, Dean’s green gaze focused on Sam’s again. “That’s it, Sammy. The last thing Dean’s been hiding from you. Can you believe it?” It pushes back from the wall, spreads its arms out wide. “I mean, can you fucking believe it all?” “Is that what this was about? The whole time? You spilling Dean’s guts to me?” Sam thinks of smoke, digging graves and the weight of his friends on his shoulders. “Why kill all those people if you just wanted to fuck with our heads?” “Answered your own question, didn’t you? I did it because I could, Sammy. You’ve got no friends to run to now, no one to help you. No one to stand with you when the end comes. No one but each other, and I think I broke this one. And I already told you, killing people is fun.” He leans forward again, breath hot and sweaty against Sam’s neck and it whispers, “Dean thought so too,” before leaning back again, giggling. Head down, he stares at the floor. He can’t watch it now, watch it move Dean’s body. Quick movements, and it’s there again, pressed up against him and Sam brings his head up and away. “Back to more important matters,” it whispers, lips pressed against his neck. “I bet you’d look good, pressed against sweaty sheets. Your mouth on my cock.” It shudders against him, Dean’s dick is hard against his belly and Sam tries to pull away but there’s a wall behind him, nowhere to go. “You have to have thought of it, Sammy,” it says, backing away again. “I am one good looking guy.” “Stop talking like you’re him,” he grits out. “You’re not him.” The demon slides forward, dragging Dean’s feet through Sam’s blood. “I am him,” it says, “in every way that matters. I know Dean. I’ve watched Dean. I’m IN Dean, kiddo.” Sam leans his head back, eyes closed so he doesn’t have to watch it. His head is pounding, sudden and ferocious and he blinks, trying to focus. “You’re not, you’re not him. You’ll never be him, no matter what you do.” Something flares in its eyes that Sam can’t decipher and it growls, teeth bared and reaches forward with the knife, cutting into Sam’s chest, under his ribs, deep and hard and Sam grits his teeth, bites back on a shout and everything in him wants to cry but it’s Dean and he can’t. The drops of blood are bigger, the pool is bigger, and Sam wonders how much he can lose and still survive this. Its hands on him again, rough strokes over the shallow cuts on his chest and stomach and its fingers clench around his hips, dragging his lower body forward until he’s pressed against Dean’s body. “You just don’t get it, junior,” it says, slow rotation of its hips and Sam clenches his teeth. The demon is talking, a low rumble of noise in his ear, all the dirty, filthy things it says Dean wants to do but Sam can’t concentrate and all he hears is buzzing, like bees trapped inside his brain. He almost doesn’t notice when the demon’s voice stops, when it shoves away from him in a hasty, clumsy maneuver and Sam opens his eyes and Dean’s face is panicked, just ridiculously scared and then, then it’s Dean. Dean looks at him from his own face and says “it’s scared, Sam. Is it, God, did I do that to you?” Dean reaches his hands out, fingers skirting the cuts on Sam’s torso. He snatches his hands away and backs up, arms wrapped around his middle, hunched over like it pains him too. “He’s angry,” he says, teeth clenched and he falls to his knees, still hunched over his stomach and Sam is watching, slack-jawed, eyes blinking against the gray when Dean’s head tips back and the demon leaves in a rush of black smoke. Dean slumps forward again, when the stream ends and the demon is gone. He shakes, Sam can see it from across the room, hunched forward and shaking and he vomits until there’s nothing more, only dry heaves he can’t control. Sam pulls at the ropes holding him, struggling against them for the first time but they’re tight, they’re really tight and that’s one thing Dean Winchester has always been amazing at, tying people up. “Dean,” he tries, voice broken and husky but it’s enough, Dean’s head snaps up and Sam can see his eyes from across the room, clear and bright and its like Sam is the only thing he can see, the only thing that matters now. The only thing that ever mattered. “God, Sammy,” he says and Sam flinches at the name (it isn’t Dean’s name for him anymore, it’s the demon’s), at Dean’s face and Dean’s voice and he can barely hold his head up and Dean’s there, warm hands on his cold ones, cutting the ropes away. Sam slumps to the floor. He opens his eyes later, seconds or minutes and Dean’s hunched over him, shirt off and pressed against his chest. His eyes are on the shirt, on Sam’s chest and the blood and Sam reaches up, touches his arm. “Dean,” he says, but his tongue is dry and it might not sound like that at all. Dean looks at him, grabs Sam’s hand and presses it against the shirt, held tight against the wound. “Can you hold that there?” he asks. “I can get some stuff from the car.” Sam nods. “Water too.” “Yeah.” He watches Dean walk out of the room and he almost calls out, almost asks Dean to take him too and he watches the door till Dean comes back, bags in one hand and a water bottle in the other. It’s obvious Sam was watching for him and he can’t read the look on Dean’s face but it makes him sad, makes him hurt worse than the cuts. Dean uncaps the water bottle and hands it to him, puts his hands back on the t-shirt. “Drink, we’ll fix this in a minute.” Sam downs half the bottle and gives it back. Dean takes a few sips, rinses his mouth and recaps it, sets it aside. He lifts the shirt up a bit and curses. “Needs stitches. What did I do to you?” Sam shakes his head, hand on Dean’s again and he says “not you” but Dean’s closed down again, face cold and hard and a little too like the demon’s. Sam looks away but the pool of blood, his blood is next to him. He looks back at Dean, it’s easier. “Let’s get out of here,” he says and Dean’s face changes, softer and sadder and he looks at Sam like he’s nuts. “I don’t want to stay here,” Sam says. “I’m fine, we can go.” “You’re not fine.” “I’ve had worse.” “Sam-” It’s tangible, the weight on his shoulders, on Dean’s shoulders, the air between them heavy with everything that’s happened. Sam has been hurt worse, but Dean’s never hurt him like this before. “Please.” Dean pulls himself together, pulls Sam together, gets him clothes and helps him stand, hand still pressed tightly against Sam’s chest and it’s like any other fight, any other time one of them got hurt but it’s not like any other time at all. “You should lay down,” Dean says when Sam tries to get in the front seat. He shrugs, lets himself be led to the back, sprawls across the seat and tucks his legs against the door, his head propped against his bag. Dean grabs something from the trunk and goes back inside the building for a few long moments and Sam has his eye on the door until Dean comes back out, squirting lighter fluid behind him. He lights a match and flicks it at the open door, stands for a few moments and watches the fire catch, spread quickly along the floor and up the walls. Sam watches Dean. He watches when Dean turns back to the car, flicks his eyes to the back where Sam is and then down, eyes on the ground as he walks back, drops into the front seat. The rumble of the engine is familiar and this is right, him and Dean in the car together, and even if they don’t know where they’re going, where they’ve been, or what the hell they’ll do, Sam can’t help feeling like nothing can hurt him now and he falls asleep watching the back of Dean’s head. -- Sam opens his eyes again when the car stops. Dean catches his eye in the rearview. “It’s the first place I saw, we need to get you fixed up. I’ll go get a room.” Sam nods because there aren’t a lot of other options. He wants to be far, far away but he also wants to let Dean fix him, stitch him up and put a bandage on. Maybe Dean needs to. Dean comes back, keys in hand and he helps Sam out of the back, grabs the bags and leads him to their room. He still has the flask they always keep for this purpose and he pours whiskey down Sam’s throat, enough that he only flinches a little when Dean starts to sew him up, enough that he has to bite his tongue, really bite it until it bleeds to keep himself from rambling, from spilling everything he hated about the time that Dean was gone. Dean’s stitches have never been the neatest, too impatient but that’s the best because it’s quick and clean. He tapes gauze down over the stitches, over the shallower cuts on Sam’s neck and stomach, arms and legs. He uses the rough white hotel towels to clean Sam up the best he can, scrubbing at the streaks of blood, rubbing over the stitches like he can erase them, the reasons for them and it hurts, it hurts more than the stitches, more than the cuts did when the demon gave them to him, and Sam has to stop him, pull the towel away when he’s clean, when it’s done. “Sorry,” Dean says, and won’t meet his eyes. He starts to get up but Sam catches his hand, his arm and won’t let him up. “Sam, what?” “Don’t go,” he says. “I’m not.” “Don’t go.” Dean’s face isn’t closed anymore, not cold, it’s close to broken and he works at something in his mouth, like he can’t say it but it needs to be said. He touches just the tips of his fingers to the bruises ringing Sam’s neck, to the tape and the gauze and to bare skin, parts the demon hadn’t gotten to yet. He can’t look at Sam when he says, “How can you. How can you even look at me? Let me touch you?” Sam tightens his grip, fingers digging into Dean’s skin. “Stupid.” Dean laughs a little, but it isn’t a real laugh. “You’re my brother,” Sam says, tugging on Dean’s arm some more. Dean gives up but it was never a real fight and he lays next to Sam and Sam still won’t let go of his arm. He watches Dean watch him until he can’t keep his eyes open anymore, but he never lets go. He listens to Dean breathing, to the soft susurrations in and out, in and out, the rhythm of his life. It’s the last thing he hears before he falls asleep. – He opens his eyes and it’s still dark, or dark again. His hand is still clenched around Dean’s arm and Dean’s eyes are open but they’re not looking at him. He loosens his grip a bit but doesn’t let go. Dean shifts his gaze, acknowledges Sam’s awake, but won’t look at him. His chest hurts but he doesn’t want to say anything about that. His head feels weird too, empty somehow and it takes him a really long time to realize it feels weird because it doesn’t hurt, no pain, no migraines, no visions for hours, maybe days. He brings his free hand up, taps against his head experimentally. Nothing. “Brain still there?” He doesn’t laugh, but he doesn’t think Dean expected him to. “Dean?” he whispers. “What?” Sam tries to shift around to his side, but moving his torso pulls at his stitches and that hurts so he stops. He settles for turning his head, owl-like, and watching Dean as he asks, “What did you mean, back there, when you said it was scared? Or angry?” And because he’s watching he sees Dean flinch a little, his jaw clenches, teeth grinding and he’d pull away probably but Sam won’t let go of him. A few moments and just like that, the fight goes out of him and Sam’s never seen his brother look defeated before. He hates it. “The yellow eyed bastard was angry, screaming at the one in my head, that one was scared. Angry because I was hurting you, maybe killing you, and it has other plans.” Red flags in Sam’s head and it’s starting to get a little fuzzy around the edges, sleep dragging at him again but he knows enough still to say, “Hey, improper use of pronoun there. Not you. The demon, not you.” Dean inhales, exhales slowly and Sam listens to it, the familiar rhythm of Dean. “Yeah, sure,” he says. Sam knows Dean doesn’t believe him yet but he’s too tired to argue. Sleep drags at him again and his fingers tighten again on Dean’s arm and he gives in. – He opens his eyes again. Daylight, but the curtains are drawn so it’s muted. His chest still hurts. He turns his head, looks for Dean, and realizes his hand is clenched in sheets, not skin. He panics, hand scrambling in the sheet as if Dean is hiding somehow. “Relax, Sammy. I just had to pee.” The voice is behind him but he doesn’t turn over to look. Sick combination: the name, the sarcasm, the tight, panicked knot in his chest. He shudders and his gut clenches and he tries to tell himself to stop, that it’s Dean and not something else. He sits up slowly, hand on his chest and Dean walks a wide circle around him, sits on the unused bed, close enough that Sam scoots forward a little and their knees bump in the empty space between them. He has a ringed bruise on his arm where Sam held him all night. “You’re scared of me.” And he is, a little. Not of Dean, exactly, but of what Dean might become again, of what he was. “I’m not,” he says, and maybe he’s trying to convince himself as well. Dean’s face is still skeptical, pain and anger and guilt etched in the sharp angles. Sam brings his hand up and in a gesture that neither one of them would have accepted before, he smooths his hand over Dean’s cheek, fingers curling around the nape of his neck. “I’ll show you I’m not,” he says. Dean meets his eyes and they’re the clear green he remembers, though he’s never seen this expression before. There’s guilt there, disbelief, doubt, unhappiness, a whole mess of negativity that Sam wants, needs, to erase. New things, strange things and it’s a little like having to rewrite their language, the unspoken meaning between them because it’s all become different somehow. Dean is absolutely still for a few minutes and it reminds Sam of a deer caught in bright lights, a rabbit that scents a hunter, something vulnerable and wild. Sam doesn’t move either, hand still on Dean’s face, gaze still locked, and Sam’s heart is pounding but it isn’t fear this time. It’s something else. Dean moves first, jerks his head away from Sam’s grasp and holds out his hand. “I also grabbed these.” He drops two pills in Sam’s hand, antibiotics from the small arsenal of prescription drugs they keep on hand, just in case. “For the knife wound,” he says. Sam shakes them around a minute, like dice he’s about to throw. He looks at Dean still, considering, until Dean stands and starts rummaging through their bags, sorting through clothes and weapons. “You going to take them?” he asks. Sam shrugs, pops the pills in his mouth and dry swallows them, gagging a little at the sharp feeling as they scrape along their way to his stomach. He grabs the water bottle on the night stand as an afterthought and washes them down the rest of the way. “We should move on,” he says, recapping the bottle. Dean shrugs, still rummaging through the bags and Sam wonders exactly how much there is in there to organize. “Whatever you want.” “I want more distance between us and that room.” Dean stops for a minute, eyes on his hands and Sam doesn’t need to specify what room. Dean knows. “Me too,” he says. Sam showers carefully (with the door open, so he can hear Dean in the main room), not getting the stitches any wetter than he has to but it’s all kinds of difficult, since they’re in the middle of his damn chest. He’s light headed by the time he’s done, movements slow and jerky and maybe standing this long was a bad idea. He can’t remember the last time he was hurt bad enough that he couldn’t shower. He takes some painkillers in the bathroom where Dean can’t see him and pulls on his jeans. He really needs to do some laundry, everything from the bag in the Impala smells like dirty socks. He digs through Dean’s bag, comes up with a bunch of clothing he doesn’t recognize from the many, many times he’s done the wash. He’s holding up a couple of shirts (and, honestly, name brand? Dean?) when Dean says “I stole those.” Sam looks up, Dean’s eyes are glued to the TV screen. “You mean, it did.” “Whatever, Sam, they’re unpaid- for merchandise.” “What happened to your other stuff?” “Threw it away.” And yeah, Sam can’t really see the demon hanging out in a laundromat either. He picks one of the new shirts and rips the tag off, slips it over his head. “You ready?” Dean clicks the TV off. “Yeah,” he says. Sam grabs the keys from the dresser and Dean doesn’t protest for once. He grabs their bags and follows Sam out the door, into the sunshine. -- Sam drives until it’s dark and then way past it. He was with the demon the first time he rode in the car since everything happened, and asleep the second time and it should feel stranger to him that he missed the car but it doesn’t; he grew up in here and it’s home as much as Dean is. He pats the steering wheel and feels like he understands Dean a little bit more. “Dude, were you just, petting the car?” “No. Maybe. I missed it.” Dean was laughing a minute ago, but that shuts him up faster than anything and Sam watches out of the corner of his eye as he stills, turns back to the road in front of him. “Yeah,” he says. “Dean, I didn’t mean-” “It’s fine.” “It’s not fine. It isn’t your fault.” “Yeah,” Dean says again. -- Sam drives up into the mountains, small, winding back roads through tall trees and long stretches of empty dark. He stops finally at a small, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it town boasting a hotel and, further down the main strip, a small collection of cabins for rent. Sam pulls up in front of the double wide that serves the cabins as an office. He turns the car off, tosses the keys to Dean. “I’ll be right back,” he says. And he leaves Dean alone with the keys and the Impala. He hopes Dean gets the message. He comes back with a small key dangling from a whittled grizzly bear and Dean’s leaning against the hood of the car, waiting. “Number two,” Sam says, shaking the key. “Laundromat across the street.” Sam tries to grab his bag but Dean takes it from him, carefully avoids touching Sam’s hand. “Don’t rip the stitches.” He follows Sam to the cabin and Sam unlocks the door and steps back because Dean always walks in first. Old habits die hard. Dean pushes the door to their one-room cabin open and Sam peers over his shoulder. They’ve stayed in nicer places, sure, and the dead animals peering at them from every available inch of wall space might be a little creepy, but it was cheap and it was their’s for as long as they needed it. “Home sweet home,” Dean says as he steps across the threshold and drops the bags on the floor. Sam shrugs. “They rent by the month.” Surprise and a little bit of worry in Dean’s voice. “We’re not staying here that long.” And Sam stops, staring straight at Dean because if Dean doesn’t understand this, it isn’t worth anything. “We are staying here, right here, until I can figure out how to keep that thing out of you. For good. I’m not going through that again.” He shouldn’t have said that, Dean tenses and Sam kicks himself but it’s already too late. “Yeah, that must have been rough, Sammy” is all he says, and he watches Sam while he says it so he knows that Sam flinches at the name. There’s a look on his face that Sam hasn’t seen before, that’s new since this all started. It’s hard and hopeless, part angry, part sad. “Dean,” he starts, but Dean shrugs him off, flops down on the bed closest to the door like he always does, always did. Sam shrugs too (the gesture must be catching) and grabs his bag from where Dean dropped it. He starts sorting his clothes into what needs to be washed and what doesn’t, and then he decides that everything needs to be washed so he stops and throws it all back in the bag. “I’m gonna go wash this,” he says, and feels amazingly redundant. “You shouldn’t carry that.” “I’m fine.” “You’re gonna rip the stitches.” “I’ll be careful.” “You really want to leave me here alone?” Sam turns from the open doorway, and that’s the real question, isn’t it. “Why wouldn’t I?” Dean doesn’t answer but he does stop his intense study of the ceiling to give Sam a look, and this one’s familiar, mostly are you stupid? with a touch of incredulity and guilt mixed in. “Dean-” but he knows that look too, one step away from too much and it’s too soon for this, too close. “Go do your laundry, Sam. I’ll be here.” “I know,” Sam says, and leaves. -- He does laundry until just about an hour before dawn and if he glances across the street occasionally, checking the door of their cabin, Dean never needs to know. He walks back across the street lugging the laundry and when he opens the door, Dean’s still awake, staring at the TV and Sam knows an infomercial about food processors can’t be that interesting. Sam thinks about it, standing there in the dark staring at Dean, and he can’t remember the last time he saw Dean close his eyes for longer than it takes to blink. He drops the bag on the floor near the door and steps between Dean and the TV, nudging his knee against the bed. “You need to sleep,” he says. Dean won’t look at him, just rubs at his chest and studies the remote on the end of the bed. “I’ll sleep when I’m dead.” “That’s not funny.” “Whatever.” Dean leans forward to grab the remote, a quick, sharp motion and Sam hates himself for flinching away and steps closer immediately afterward. But the look is on Dean’s face again and Sam can’t make it go away. Sam shucks his jeans and jacket, down to boxers and the designer shirt the demon stole and he lays down on his bed. For a little while it seems like he might fall asleep but something’s not right and even though Dean is right there, right in the room with him he still feels like the phone should ring, like he should be running, getting away so he gets up, shuffles around to the far side of Dean’s bed. Dean doesn’t say anything, doesn’t even look at him as Sam crawls under the covers. Dean moves over a bit and gives Sam one of the pillows he’d been using to prop himself against the head board. Sam tucks his head against Dean’s side, hooks his hand in the crook of Dean’s arm, resting against his chest and the tight, panicky feeling in his chest goes away and he falls asleep. -- Heavy arm across his back, holding him down when he wakes up and he feels Dean’s breath against the back of his neck, slow and even in sleep. He doesn’t move for long moments, letting the warmth, the breath, letting Dean sink into him, meld with his bones. He doesn’t move, but Dean wakes up anyway, his breathing changes, it’s faster when he jerks back in a quick, harsh movement from where he’d been pressed against Sam’s back. Sam rolls over to pull him back, call him a jerk but Dean’s up already and Sam only catches a glimpse of Dean’s back before he shuts the bathroom door behind him. -- Dean showers, Sam showers and Sam’s rooting through his bag for clothes when he realizes that Dean’s wearing one of his shirts. One of Sam’s shirts, not one of the brand-name things the demon stole. “Do you want to get rid of these?” he asks, gesturing towards Dean’s bag. Dean shrugs. “Stole ‘em fair and square.” “You didn’t.” “Semantics.” “No, you’ve got to stop it. You didn’t steal them.” “My hands, my face on whatever security camera was watching. Might as well have.” Something about the slightly too large shirt makes Dean look smaller, not just smaller but fragile, like he might break if Sam pushes it much further and he gives it up, again. He can dance around this for as long as Dean can. Longer. He picks up another of the new shirts, rips the tag off and puts it on. “I’m going into town. We need food.” Dean doesn’t look up from the magazine he’s flipping through, a back order of People. “And beer.” “Okay, we need food and beer. Coming?” “No.” “Why not?” Dean looks up at that, another variation of the are you stupid look on his face. “Why should I?” “Because if you don’t I’ll only get light beer?” “Then you’d have to drink it.” “I’m okay with that.” “College twisted your brain. You go, Sam. You don’t have to watch me every second of the day.” “I’m not. I just.” Don’t want to leave you alone right now. Ever. But he can’t say those things to Dean and he wonders how different things would be if he could. “Fine, I’ll be back.” He grabs the keys from the table near the door and leaves. -- Not much of a grocery store but they’ve never been picky eaters. He grabs cereal, milk, more bare essentials. The cabin’s got a fridge in the tiny corner kitchen. The general store across the street has donuts the size of his head (which is pretty impressive, considering) so he grabs a couple of those and a bag of white undershirts in Dean’s size. He’ll slip them into his bag later. He gets back and Dean grabs the keys, Sam watches from the door while Dean unloads the arsenal from the trunk and brings them and the cleaning supplies inside. “I don’t think this stuff’s been cleaned since-” is all he says, and Sam knows how to finish that sentence but he doesn’t. He sits on his mostly unused bed, waits till Dean is sitting, till all the guns are disassembled in front of him and Dean’s hands are mostly occupied with parts and brushes and cloths before he asks “did you really get into college?” “What?” “Something you-it said.” Dean’s gaze pops up to his, he caught the slip as soon as Sam did and Sam wants to kick himself. “I remember. Yeah, Sammy.” He watches Sam when he says it this time and shrugs a little when Sam doesn’t flinch again. “I did.” “How come you never said anything?” Dean shrugs again. “Didn’t really matter, I wasn’t ever gonna go.” “But you could have.” “Yeah.” “You are so dumb.” And Dean didn’t expect that, Sam can tell. His hands drop to the bed, gun parts falling out of them and the look is equal parts anger, shock, and disgust. “The fuck?” “You could have had something, something else. You could have gotten away and done something different and had something to fall back on, something to do when this is over.” Dean gets up then, quick and sharp and if he notices that Sam jumps a little, he doesn’t say anything, but the pain behind his eyes is the same. He paces around the room like it’s too small, like he wants to run away but Sam’s standing up now, between Dean and the door. “It’s never gonna be over,” he says. “There will always be something.” “You can’t do this forever, Dean. It’ll catch up with you someday, your body will break down, hell. You’ll get old.” “The hell I am. I’m never getting old.” “Everyone gets old.” “Dad didn’t.” “Is that what you want? To go out like Dad? Blaze of glory, don’t care who you leave behind?” And he remembers Dean’s quiet acceptance before, how he didn’t fight the ruined heart, the death sentence, even before Dad died. Dean’s always wanted to go this way. It scares him, makes him angry, his heart races and he clenches his hands into tight fists that he doesn’t know what to do with. Dean’s in his face now, shoves him back a step and there’s a little jump in Sam’s stomach and he has to remind himself it’s Dean. “Well what do you want, Sammy? To waste away in some hospital, some nursing home, sick and old while someone else changes your diapers? I’m not going like that.” Dean’s angry, really angry and it’s the first time Sam’s seen the expression since he’s been back and for some reason he can’t begin to guess, it’s comforting. Dean isn’t some shell of a person anymore, he’s there, he’s with Sam and he’s angry. They’re toe to toe, nose to nose and Sam looms over Dean, happy again to be taller in this moment when he wants to make Dean understand. “I don’t want to have to choose.” “Well fuck that fate, destiny shit. I’m not wasting away.” “You’d leave me. You’d leave me behind.” Not angry, not sad, not questioning. Dean as good as said it and it hurts to hear, it hurts even more to know that Dean means it. Dean looks away, steps back a bit and doesn’t answer, won’t answer, won’t confirm anymore. Now Sam’s angry, angry and scared and he reaches out, fists his hands in Dean’s shirt, his shirt, pressed against Dean’s chest. “Damn it,” he says, close into Dean’s face and he can feel Dean’s breath against his cheek and it doesn’t slow him down, doesn’t make him any less angry or scared. “Don’t you get it? If you die, if anything happens to you, there is nothing left for me. I don’t care when it happens, where it happens, or how you LET it happen, I won’t be far behind. And I will haunt your ass because there’s no way I’m letting you go.” “You can’t haunt me. I’ll be dead.” Sam’s fists clench harder in the shirt, he uses them to shake Dean, just a little. “Don’t joke about this. I’m serious.” Dean’s hands on him now, clenched around his biceps like he could hold Sam, somehow stop him from going through with it. “You can’t put that on me, Sammy. Not with everything else. You can’t put that on me.” “I will do what I have to, to keep you here.” “Damn it, that’s just like. You’re just like Dad. Why can’t you see that I’m nothing? That I bring you down. You’ve got,” he waves his hand, trying to pluck words from the air. “You’ve got that other life you were talking about. You shouldn’t, you shouldn’t make yourself about me. I’m nothing.” Sam lets his hands unclench but he doesn’t pull them from Dean’s chest. “You’re not. That’s so stupid, Dean. How can you… How can you even think that?” “What have I got? You. You and hunting. You’ll go back to school, be a lawyer, whatever you want. You can do that. I can’t. So what. So Dad traded his life for mine, for this? So I could kill all his friends? And everyone we knew? He warned me about you, told me to look out for you. He should have had you looking out for me.” Dean’s still angry, hell, Sam’s still angry but it isn’t the same anymore, it isn’t hot flashes, it’s a slow burn, a dull ache they’ve lived with most of their lives, and that he can work with. He hooks his hands around the back of Dean’s neck, he can feel Dean’s pulse racing against his palms, fear and anger and something else, and he smiles a little despite everything when Dean’s hands come up to hold his wrists. He drops his forehead to Dean’s. “I’m not going anywhere. You are all I have.” Dean tenses at that, like he wants to back up, to run away, but Sam’s hands are strong on his neck, fingers curled around his nape and Dean doesn’t go anywhere. “We look out for each other,” he says. “He didn’t need to tell us to do that, we always have.” “I’m the reason I’m the only one left.” “You were everything before this all happened too.” And he knows the only thing that will convince Dean is time, and he doesn’t know how to tell Dean that given all the choices in the world, he’d still choose Dean. Dean snorts, a laugh that isn’t a laugh and Sam can tell he’s anything but amused. “This is so fucked up. I die, you die. You die.” He stops, mouth working a little before he gets the rest out. “I die. So fucked up.” Sam shrugs. “Live together, die together. Seems right to me.” Eyes closed, they breathe in rhythm and every breath tastes like Dean. “Well then, you’re fucked up and I’m the sane one.” Now Sam snorts, rocking his head against Dean’s. “No way do you get to be the sane one.” “Yeah, probably not.” Dean stays for a few minutes more, warm hands around Sam’s wrists and Sam could probably stand like this forever, safe and secure and insulated in their own little world, but Dean drops his hands, steps back to the bed, to the guns, to something else. Sam puts away the groceries. -- He doesn’t know what time it is, the alarm clock is behind him. He wakes up and for a moment, a brief moment he knows Dean’s asleep too. Breathing deep and even, completely relaxed but Sam moves, maybe doesn’t move, maybe Dean just knows, but it isn’t long before the breathing quickens and Dean blinks awake. His fingers are tight around Dean’s arm but he squeezes harder, closer. He presses his head forward and it’s up against Dean’s shoulder when he whispers, “why don’t you sleep anymore?” “It’s the last thing I remember.” “Sleeping?” “Falling asleep. I fell asleep and I woke up and it was in me.” Sam closes his eyes and he’d give anything to take that back. “You’re safe,” he whispers and he’s close enough that his lips brush against Dean’s arm. “We’ll never be safe,” Dean says. They don’t sleep anymore. -- A new life, a new pattern. They haven’t spent this much time doing nothing since they were kids and Dad tried to give them some semblance of a normal life, a normal school experience and even then, there had always been something to look forward to, a hunt (for Dean), a school project (for Sam), something. Sam doesn’t know what to look forward to anymore. They eat, they sleep, Dean cleans the knives, the guns, the car. Sam gets the Key of Solomon, Dad’s journal, Dean’s journal, his journal, and the lap top and takes over the small table near the window of the cabin. He will make them safe, make Dean safe. Sam goes out occasionally but Dean never leaves. They don’t talk about it much. Beyond Sam’s assertion that he wouldn’t survive Dean any better than Dean would survive him (and that’s something Sam has always known) and a continued admission of survivor’s guilt, they don’t have much to say. And so they get into the habit of not speaking, of not trying to translate anything through their mouths, where words and meanings get twisted. Sam’s hand on Dean’s arm, wrist, shoulder always means the same thing. I love you, it’s okay. Dean twisting away, tensing, sitting or standing so still so Sam won’t move, won’t drop his hand and it’s I’m not good enough or how can you want me here or I can’t live without you. All variations on the same. Sam has given up even pretending to sleep in the other bed, he can’t even close his eyes anymore without touching Dean, without wrapping a hand around his arm, his wrist, without pressing his head against Dean’s shoulder. He knows that Dean doesn’t sleep until he does, that if he wakes up before Dean it won’t be long until Dean stirs, rubbing a sleepy hand over his eyes, unfocused and each day it all gets a little further away, a little harder to imagine bringing up. Sam feels the weight of the words unsaid, the pain, the anger, the guilt, pressing hard and heavy against his chest. He knows Dean feels it too and he wonders how much longer they can put it off before it kills them. -- Sam comes back late from the general store, more of the pie-plate sized donuts in a bag spotted with grease. Dean’s on the bed, head propped on a pillow as he channel surfs and Sam’s pretty sure Dean hasn’t moved from that spot for a while. Sam wonders what Dean is afraid of, seeing other people, or other people seeing him. He drops the donuts on the table, smack in the middle of the piles of research that are still yielding nothing and drops on the bed, lets his head rest on Dean’s stomach and the TV is muted, it’s quiet and still. Dean’s hands are in his hair and he pops up because that’s nothing that’s ever happened before. Dean gestures at the TV and it’s can’t see around your stupid hair and Sam shifts a little and drops back down again, listens to the strange gurgling any stomach makes from this close, to the soft rhythms of Dean’s breathing, the strong beat of Dean’s heart. He closes his eyes. -- The room is dark when he opens his eyes again, the TV off and Dean’s hand is curled around the back of his neck, tight and possessive and Sam jumps up without thinking about it, hand scrabbling at the back of his neck, trying to erase the feeling of blunt fingers squeezing until he can’t breathe, can’t think. Breath quick and fast, his heart pounds like it wants to escape his chest. Dean sits up quickly, right after him and Sam stumbles back more, trips over a bag and ends up on the floor, hands still at his neck when Dean finds the light switch and turns on the lamp and Sam can’t calm down until he forces himself to look in Dean’s eyes and it’s Dean and not the demon. Shock and hurt and pain and not mocking laughter. And Sam doesn’t know what to say. Days of not saying anything and he needs to, he needs to tell Dean it’s not him, that he can’t just turn off weeks and months of running and being scared in a couple of days. Dean doesn’t say anything either. He’d fallen asleep with his shoes on so he grabs his jacket, moves slowly and carefully around Sam and goes out the door. Sam can’t find his words, can’t find something to say to make Dean stay, to make Dean understand, so he sits quietly and lets him leave. – Sam sits up with the Key of Solomon. He can’t sleep, Dean isn’t there and he can’t get the tight knot of panic in his chest to calm down. It’s past midnight, not many places in the small town Dean can really go, but Sam hasn’t tried any of them. He wants Dean to come back on his own. He finally does right around dawn, gray light peeking through the windows and he doesn’t look at Sam when he walks in. He carefully shuts the door behind him, movements slow and exaggerated and Sam can tell he’s still scared and pissed off. “You don’t have to do that,” he says. Dean stays near the door, leaning back against it. “Do what?” “Move all slow. It was just my neck.” Dean still won’t meet his eyes. “Maybe we shouldn’t-” he starts, but the words get tangled in his mouth and he works at them, but nothing comes out. “Shouldn’t what?” “Maybe you should sleep in the other bed.” Quietly, quickly, and Sam knows it isn’t something he wants, something either of them want. “No.” “Sam.” Dean looks at him then, annoyed and angry and a hundred other things and Sam is angry too, infuriated at the whole situation, at Dean and the demon and life and so many things. He wants Dean to stop being sorry, angry, guilty, he wants their lives to be normal again, he wants Bobby and Ellen and Jo back. He clenches his fists and he won’t let Dean take anything else from him. “I’m not talking about it,” Sam says. “No.” “I freak you out.” Sam rolls his eyes. “You don’t.” “I know I do.” “You have got to stop thinking of this as your fault.” “There’s no one else.” Hell there isn’t and Sam hasn’t wanted to put this on Dean, to add this to the things Dean worries about, but he can’t hold back the words. “What about me?” “What?” “I mean what about me, Dean. I could have stopped you. You stopped me.” But he’s already shaking his head. “No, you don’t get to be guilty about this.” And that is it. That is just fucking it. “Fuck you, you think you cornered the guilt market? I didn’t save you either. I didn’t find a way to get it out of you. No trap, no magic words, no breaking the lock. Nothing. I let you go and I didn’t stop you when I had the chance and that’s my fault. I get to have that.” “When did you even have a chance? I had everything! You couldn’t have done anything, you didn’t have the book, Dad’s journal, Bobby’s journal. You had nothing.” “I could have had something.”Dean pauses and Sam can almost feel him thinking, trying to remember and he’d save him from it if he could but he still needs to justify himself. Something clicks. “Sam, no.” “If I hadn’t burned it-” “There wasn’t anything there. It lied.” “How do you know?” “I can remember that, I know it was lying. It let me know it was, just to fuck with your head.” “But I knew he knew about things, I still could have looked. There might have been something.” “I’d just killed him, you had other things on your mind.” “You didn’t kill him.” “What? Yes I did.” “You didn’t. The demon did. You did nothing.” Dean doesn’t say anything, doesn’t really hear him anymore. But Sam still has things to tell him, heavy stones that weigh him down. “I didn’t call anyone,” he says, quietly. Dean flinches like he knows what’s coming, like he wants to stop it, but Sam continues. “I let them die, Dean. I chose you over every single fucking one of them. I could have found a way to work through the migraines, I could have tried to find you. I could have called other hunters but I was too scared they wouldn’t save you. So I chose you.” Sam doesn’t have a word for what Dean does, but ‘crumples’ comes close. One minute he’s standing, the next he’s on the floor, curled into himself and shaking so hard he can’t breathe right but it still sounds like Dean and Sam’s across the room before he can speak. “You, you can’t. I remember it. I remember every one of them. It was my hand, my knife, and, God, Sam, I called you every time. And you came after me, you burned them. I know because it knew. I know. It belongs here, with me.” More denials, more assurances but talk has always been cheap. Dean won’t believe him, won’t let go of his guilt any more than Sam will let go of his. He doesn’t know how to tell Dean that it’s all right, because it isn’t. And he doesn’t know how to tell Dean it’s not his fault. And because he doesn’t know how to say these things, he doesn’t say anything. They haven’t really hugged since they were kids (beyond a “thank whoever you’re okay” pat down after a fight and that one time a power cord tried to choke Sam to death), since before they built the walls to protect themselves but a lot of things have changed since then and a lot of things are still the same. So Sam puts his arms around Dean and for a little while Dean leans into him and it feels right. – The rest of the day is sort of anticlimactic. Dean won’t go outside again and Sam spends more time doing fruitless research while Dean watches daytime TV. He decides Oprah is actually the axis of evil in the world and expands on the theory until Sam throws a pencil and tells him to shut the hell up. They’re both smiling. It’s the most normal they’ve felt in forever. Dean checks his stitches later, gets the tiny scissors from the kit and cuts them out, hands shaking a little until Sam reaches for his arm, cups his elbow and Dean calms down, breath deep and even, hands steady. -- It’s dark still when he opens his eyes, sometime in the small hours between midnight and dawn. The room is cold but they’ve got the comforter pulled up and Dean’s wrapped around him, stuck to him like he’ll run away if Dean doesn’t hold on tight enough. Sam smiles and it brushes against Dean’s shoulder and Dean’s fingers clench around his hips. Sam can tell the minute he actually wakes up because he pulls away, snatches his hands away from Sam’s waist like it burns, like it’s wrong. Sam moves after him, follows his hands across the new space between them. “No,” he says, murmurs into Dean’s neck and Dean’s hands shake when they push against Sam’s shoulders. “Don’t do this,” Dean says, low and desperate. “I’m not fucking this up too.” “You’re not, I am.” “Damn it, Sam. I remember what it said, okay? I remember saying it. You’re doing this because you think I want it and I want you to stop. I don’t need this.” But the thing is, Sam knows Dean, sometimes better than Dean knows himself. And even though some things have changed and there are secrets in Dean’s eyes he’s never seen before and can only guess at the truth of, he knows this. He knows that Dean wants it, even needs it as much as he does, and he plays the one card that always gets them what they both need. “I do,” Sam says, and Dean’s resistance crumbles like Sam is the Big Bad Wolf and Dean is the house of straw and that’s how Sam finds out Dean kisses like he’s dying, or like he’s being reborn, like he’ll never need to breathe again. Dean’s hands are on his face and his mouth is open, pressed against Sam’s. He’s making the softest, neediest noises that Sam would be duty-bound to give him crap for if he wasn’t making the same noises himself and even if it’s nothing he ever thought of before, it’s everything he’s always wanted. Dean’s hair is soft against the palm of his hand, fingers splayed as Sam cups the back of his head. Dean’s hands move from his face over his chest, tickle across his ribs before they’re back at his hips and Dean’s thumb presses into the crease of Sam’s thigh. Dean shifts his hips and his cock is hard and heavy against Sam’s thigh and for a moment, a brief second it’s the world’s biggest mind-fuck and he thinks this is my brother. But then cold fingers slide into his boxers, wrap around his dick and he’s hard, leaking, and Dean twists his wrist just like he knows Sam likes it, and it doesn’t matter anymore that they’re brothers because no one knows him better than Dean and no one cares about him more. Sam can live with that, Sam can dive into that feeling and drown in it because it’s true for him too. Sam laughs a little, short puffs into Dean’s mouth when Dean moves, climbs on top of him and straddles his waist, hand still wrapped around his cock as Dean pulls his boxers off with the other. “Put your hands on me, Sam,” he whispers against Sam’s cheek. Sam does, inches the waist of Dean’s boxers down as much as he can and slips his hands inside, one on Dean’s ass and the other on Dean’s cock. Dean presses forward, down, and Sam moves both hands around to Dean’s ass when Dean wraps his fist around both of them, twisting his hand and Sam presses up into it, into Dean, and he can’t last much longer. Dean’s mouth is still on him, his neck and ear, hot breath gusting over his skin and he thrusts up once more and Dean’s name is wrenched from his lips, wet warmth spreading between them. Dean licks into his mouth, chasing after the word and Sam pushes his hand away, slips his fingers around Dean’s cock again and flicks his thumb over the head and Dean whimpers (another embarrassing sound Sam will remember later) and comes. He collapses next to Sam, shoulders pressed together and Sam rolls onto his side, nudges his head against Dean’s arm. “We going to cuddle now?” Dean asks. “Shut up,” Sam says, but it’s mostly just for show, like he could be annoyed this soon after an orgasm. He fists a hand in the sheets and wipes it over himself, over Dean, cleans them up and he pulls on Dean’s arm, drags him over to the other bed. Dean falls onto it when Sam pushes and Sam follows, wraps himself around Dean and falls asleep with his nose pressed to the warm skin behind Dean’s ear. -- Sam wakes up and he’s already hard, Dean’s straddling him again and it’s just like last night, just as good as last night. Dean’s hand is wrapped around his cock, his lips pressed against Sam’s neck. His hand comes up, cups the back of Dean’s head, he slides the other around to Dean’s ass. “Harder.” The word is muffled against his skin but Sam hears it anyway. He complies, fingers gripping warm skin and he pushes up into Dean, his cock sliding against Dean’s hip. Dean is spread over him, open and warm and Sam brings his hand around, smooths over the hard flesh of Dean’s cock. “Harder,” Dean says again. Dean's hand clenches around his, tight and all wrong and Sam knows it has to hurt. It’s still new and different but Sam’s got the equipment and he knows how to use it. He knows this isn’t it. “Sam, come on.”And it’s Clock me one. C’mon. Hit me. He stills, free hand clenching in the sheets, warmth from earlier gone and he’s so angry he’d hit Dean if he knew it wasn’t exactly what Dean wanted. He pulls his hand away, spreads them out on the bed, away from Dean. "No." "Sam, c'mon." It’s how Dean has always said he’s sorry, with his body, with his possessions, never with words. And it pisses Sam off that Dean’s sorry for this, for wanting Sam, for needing Sam, for putting his hands on Sam. "No! Fuck you. Can't you just say you're sorry like a normal person?” Dean pulls back, far enough away that he isn't touching Sam anywhere and Sam tells himself it's the cool air on overheated skin that makes him shiver. “There’s nothing normal about me.” Sam reaches out then, gentle hand on Dean’s arm and Dean flinches away but Sam follows, doesn’t break the contact. “You’re wrong,” Sam says. He presses against Dean and he’s happy to be bigger, to spread himself over Dean and hold him down, but Dean could get away if he really wanted to. He doesn’t. Dean doesn’t say anything more about it, and Sam doesn’t ask him. – They go into town later that week, broad daylight and they’re walking down the main street, kitschy little shops and antique stores and every now and then Sam catches their reflection in a picture window and it looks good, it looks right. Dean only panics once and Sam puts his hand on Dean’s neck, fingers curled around his nape and Dean backs up into him for a minute, still and quiet and then he’s fine. Sam takes him to the general store and they buy more donuts, like they haven’t already eaten their weight in the sticky dough. They end up in what passes for the local night life, tiny dive with an antique Winchester over the bar that the bartender swears still works. Dean shrugs and Sam laughs and they both order the local brew. They grab a booth in the back. Sam hasn’t been in a bar since Harvelle’s and he doesn’t know all the places the demon took Dean but one look at Dean’s face and Sam knows what he’s thinking. Sam hooks his foot around Dean’s ankle underneath the table, where no one can see and question and look at them funny and Dean smirks a little just for show. Shadows in Dean’s eyes now he knows may never leave, and he knows he’s got them too. They’re marked in a way they weren’t before and he knows Dean still watches him, and it’s the way he watches Dean because he doesn’t believe any more than Dean does that the fucker is really done messing with them and it sucks and it isn’t fair, but this is their life now. He tips his beer back, drains the glass and gestures to the bartender for another. The more he drinks the more the knot that’s been in his chest since that first phone call loosens, wants to break free of him in a howl. It doesn’t help when Dean kicks back a few and leans forward, hunched across the table and says “I know you saw them” and Sam doesn’t have to ask what he’s talking about. The visions. The demon knew, probably let Dean know too. “Yeah.” Dean leans back and it’s back to not meeting his eyes, to studying the table top, the wall, the sign to the men’s room, anything but Sam. “Shit,” he says. Sam hooks his other leg around Dean’s, trapping him into the booth (just in case he was thinking of leaving) and sits up, forward, so quickly that Dean’s eyes snap to his, startled at the sudden movement. “Not. Your. Fault.” he says quietly, slowly. And Dean nods, a small, quiet gesture but it makes Sam want to cry, to shout, to jump up and down because it’s something, it’s so very something. “Yeah,” Dean says, and it’s everything. They stumble back to the cabin later and Sam tells Dean what Missouri told him and he pretends not to notice when Dean cries. -- Sam spends hours with the Key of Solomon, reading every page six times and he sometimes turns it upside down, just to see if it's written in some sort of code. He wishes he had Bobby but he doesn't say it aloud. An idea comes to his mind and it comes to him that sometimes, what things don't say is almost as important as what they do. He sprawls on the bed next to Dean, grabs the remote and turns off the TV. “Okay," he says, "hear me out. This may be the dumbest idea ever." Dean nods. "So the Devil’s trap keeps demons in, and out. Of anything.” “With you so far.” “So why wouldn’t having one on your body work too?” "Like a tattoo?" Dean shrugs. "I don’t know. Bobby never said they worked that way.” “Bobby also said those charms would keep us from getting possessed. He was good, no denying that, but he didn’t know everything.” “Yeah, guess not.” “It’s worth a try, at least, right? I’d douse you in chicken blood and pig vomit right now if the book said anything about it.” An exaggerated grimace and Sam is happy they can still make bad jokes. “Well, thank goodness it doesn’t.” “So. Get your coat. We’re getting inked.” “What, now?” “Why not?” Dean shrugs again. “Okay.” – They have to drive to the outskirts of town to find a place but it’s there, tucked up amongst the trees and off the main road. Sam has the drawing in his hand and the artist only squints at it for a minute before he asks where he wants it. Sam shrugs, looks at Dean because they hadn’t talked about that but Dean shrugs back at him, like this is Sam’s idea and he’s staying out of it. “Right here,” he says, pointing at the center of his chest. The artist nods, eyes back on the drawing. “Who’s going first?” he asks. Sam pushes Dean forward. -- Lots of money and lots of tiny sharp needles later, Dean pokes a little at the red skin around the tattoo. Sam pokes at it a little too, it burns but it’s bearable and he’s definitely had worse. Dean pokes him in the shoulder. “How do we test drive these things?” “What do you mean?” “How do we know they’ll work? Should we call up something?” “Dude, seriously. You want to summon a demon and invite it in?” “What, you have a better idea?” “Yeah, we just wait for them to come to us. Keep doing what we’ve been doing and wait and see.” “That’s your plan? Wait and see?” “Yeah, Dean. Do you have a better one?” “Summoning a demon is really a bad plan?” It’s probably not, it probably is, but Sam wants to live with hope for a little longer. “Yeah, it really is.” Dean shrugs. “Whatever you want.” And that sounds wrong. “No, it’s not whatever I want,” he says. “It’s not me telling you what to do now in some never ending penance. We still make decisions together.” “Fine.” “Fine. So, do you want to wait, or do you want to summon a demon?” “We’ll wait.” “Fine.” “Fine.” “Jerk.” “Bitch.” -- Sam drops a newspaper over Dean’s bowl of cereal one morning. “Buda, Texas,” he says, dropping into the chair across from Dean. “What’s there?” Dean picks up the paper, squints at it, but Sam knows he won’t read it, he’ll wait for Sam to tell him. “Dead guy that won’t stay dead.” “Zombie? I love zombies.” Dean’s eyes light and if that isn’t the best thing Sam’s seen in months. “Maybe. We should check it out.” “Just like that? Back to business?” “We could sit here and let you say another five hundred ‘Our Fathers’ as penance before we leave.” “Asshole.” “What are brothers for?” “To be assholes, apparently.” Sam reaches out, touches his wrist, he wants to be certain they’re still playing, that he didn’t strike a nerve. Dean catches his eye and he knows what Sam’s doing. “Don’t, Sammy. I’m fine.” Smiles, Dean called him ‘Sammy’ and neither one of them flinched and for the first time, he really thought they’d be okay. They pack up, the Impala’s gassed and ready and there’s nothing before them but open road. Dean gets behind the wheel and sits for a moment, keys dangling in his hand. He doesn’t look at Sam, doesn’t take his eyes off the emblem in the middle of the steering wheel, fingers tracing over the stitching. “How do. How do I come back from this? Where do we go from here?” “Buda. Texas.” “I mean it, Sam.” Sam shrugs, legs tucked against the Impala’s dash, windows down, everything’s okay right now, in a way it hasn’t been for months. He stretches his arm along the back of the seat and his hand brushes the nape of Dean’s neck and Dean smiles, just smiles and Sam knows the weight of that mouth, the feel of it pressed against his and it’s really all ridiculously great. He thinks about it, about everything (how can he not?) and it comes to this. He loves Dean. He’s always loved Dean. He never wants to let Dean go and if this is part of that, Sam can do that. Sam can go there and it doesn’t matter if anyone understands it because it’s them and they’re the only ones they have to answer to. So he doesn’t question this need to touch Dean, that he can only sleep when he’s wrapped around Dean anymore, that Dean only sleeps when he does and that Dean is only really calm, really happy when Sam’s hands are on him. That he calls Dean’s name when he comes and that Dean has the sexiest whimper when Sam flips him over and presses him into the sheets. Because Sam knows a good thing, a great thing, something that is right and works when he sees it and this? This is as good as good will ever get, maybe better than good ever was. “I don’t know,” he says, finally. “But we’ll figure it out.”
|
So many freaking people to thank...
(This sounds like a freaking Oscar acceptance speech, OMG. Sorry!)
God, I wish I knew where all this angst came from. I’m really a happy person,
I swear! gwentastic came up with the original story, I kept going in and
making it darker than it had been originally so if you leave this experience
permanently scarred, it’s probably my fault. (Although, it was A LOT darker
at one point, but I'm a big fluffy chicken.) If you leave it thinking “wow,
what a crazy good story,” that’s probably her fault. Huge thanks and a big
sloppy kiss go out to her also for letting me natter on to her about the
story, and for being such an awesome plot hole plugger. (Which, coincidentally,
sounds vaguely naughty.) She also beta’d it, so thanks to her for that as
well. nemoinis has beta’d every freaking thing I’ve written from the dawn
of time and she’s gotten past the point where she’s nice about it but she
brings the beta-fu so it’s hard to mind. She's brutal and I love every
second of it. incredulity let me read it to her in parts over the phone and
cried in all the appropriate places and if you can't love making your friends
cry, what can you love? misskittye checked it for grammar issues and outside
opinion plot holes (since she’s yet to cave in to the wonder that is SPN).
The title is also gwentastic’s fault.
You girls. I love you.
(*music plays, mic beats a hasty retreat into the floor*)