Archive of Our Own

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Dean says, squinting down at the blurry Cas on the TV. Cas narrows his eyes, sets his jaw. If this were a regular situation, Dean would be settling in to give the guy a couple more rounds of shit, but as it stands Dean wants to get this over with. Sam’s Perfect Thanksgiving Family is still asking an invisible Sam about his trig test this week, and Dean wants to cut his own ears off.

“It means,” Cas says, frustrated, “that this next part is going to be difficult.”

Dean catches Sam’s eyes, and Sam’s brow furrows. Difficult. As if this thing hadn’t been difficult enough already. They’re not going to talk about what they’ve seen so far today. They can’t—in order to keep pushing, the Winchesters are going to push everything down until the pressure of it kills them. Or makes them explode, either one works.

“In order to get to the garden and find Joshua, you will have to follow the road to the garden.” Cas says. “But, you will be traveling the border between your Heaven and others. There will be pushback.”

“What, no visiting the neighbors?” Dean asks, and Sam shoots him a look.

“No,” Cas says, teeth gritted. “This is serious, Dean. Heaven will try to stop you. Ignoring Zachariah and his search teams, Heaven has its own security measures to prevent trespass into other Heavens.”

“Security measures?” Sam repeats, brow raised.

“Yes.” Cas’s face flickers in and out of focus, and his voice cuts out for a second. “—distractions, to put it mildly. It will show you your greatest fears, your greatest desires, whatever will slow you down.”

“Woah, hold on.” Dean tries to wrap his mind around this. “It’ll throw us into memories of our greatest fears?” His stomach twists. He doesn’t want Sam to see him in the pit. He’s spent years now sweating those nightmares out and keeping them far away from Sam. Especially after today, he doesn’t want those wires crossed.

“No. More like hallucinations.” Static as Cas filters out of focus again. “—hypothetical worst nightmare. Something you haven’t experienced but are afraid to. The deepest desire of your soul.”

“Oh, well if that’s all.” Dean turns to give Sam another look, and Sam returns it with a wide-eyed shrug.

“You would do best to go through the trees.” Cas says, ignoring Dean’s attempt at levity. “Following the road in the open makes you easier to find for Zachariah.”

And then he’s gone.

Dean sighs heavily.

“Over the hill and through the woods to God’s house, I guess.” Dean smacks his thighs, and stands up. When they cross the room to the front door, the road outside is gone. 

He and Sam split up and look for clues like usual, and before Dean knows it, he’s standing in a kid’s bedroom wearing an “I Wuv Hugs” shirt and seriously reconsidering his life choices.

Then his mom walks in, and it all kind of goes to shit from there.

~~~

Sam keeps giving Dean looks out of the corner of his eyes like he might shatter. 

They’re trudging through the woods alongside the road, and Dean keeps getting hit with low-hung branches. They scratch at his face and legs, although gratefully he’s back in his normal clothes. He doesn’t know what he’d do if he had to Wuv Hugs for the rest of this ordeal.

Seeing mom was a lot, but it might have been less agonizing than finding out that Sam’s greatest hits album includes two of Dean’s worst lows in the written record.

Dean doesn’t want to talk about it, or the fact that that Flagstaff cabin is still etched in some of his nightmares.

He doesn’t want to talk about the fact that the night that Sam left for Stanford, Dean had almost kissed him, a culmination of three years of sick longing and a love too intense to be brotherly.

He doesn’t want to look at the perfect family that Sam dreamed about in Heaven, a perfect family if Dean didn’t love him more than any goddamn thing in the world, if Dad wasn’t the way that he was and raised them the way that they did.

It wasn’t a miracle that Dean fell in love with Sam, it was a miracle that the kid hadn’t figured it out yet.

Dean had tried to be as subtle as possible and not let any of his sick, twisted-up longing seep into Sam’s edges.

If there were any doubt in Dean’s mind that Sam didn’t want him (there wasn’t, anyhow, not after Ruby), Heaven was it.

Soulmates.

He and Sammy were soulmates, and Sam’s greatest memories were still living nightmares for Dean. How could one soul be so diametrically opposed to the other?

Dean shudders, but tires to disguise it as a check to the skies for their holy ankle monitors. 

The air around them feels tacky and strange, like they’re wading through a Louisiana spring after a morning rain. Like it’s warm enough for the rain to start evaporating bordering on hot enough for it to be muggy and miserable.

Just as Dean starts to think, Maybe we won’t trip any alarms, he sees him.

There, with his back to a tree, is Sam. Dean stops immediately, an arm thrown out to stop Sam from coming up behind him. It’s like he’s lit up by a spotlight—Dean can see him unnaturally well, too well for the dark of the forest. It’s Sam as he is now, not the child that Dean had been greeted with when he entered Heaven. He looks winded, brow twisted in…pain? His chest his heaving, and he’s leaning against the trunk of the tree like he can barely keep himself up.

Dean hears a sharp inhale from the Sam behind him. This Sam is wearing Sam’s usual clothes, a familiar threadbare black shirt and one of his flannels. That probably means that this is actually Sam—not an angel wearing a likeness. They must have reached the borders that Castiel warned about.

This is a great fear or a desire for either Sam or Dean. From the way Sam’s head snaps back against the bark, mouth opening in a soundless cry, Dean is worried that this fear might be his. 

That doesn’t make sense though. They had been going back and forth, Sam then Dean then Sam again. They just finished Dean’s memory (Dean still feels his mother’s illusory warmth on his palms and his whole body hurts), so whatever this is should be Sam’s.

“What should we—“ The real Sam starts to ask, but the image of Sam reaches his arms out, as if grabbing for someone. Sam falls silent.

Someone steps into the cradle of his arms—appearing between one blink and the next—and Sam’s arms wind around them like he knows exactly who they are. He smiles, slow and happy, a hand sliding into short brown hair. It’s a man, Dean realizes, a little surprised. 

Sam makes a noise behind him, and Dean doesn’t understand for a second. That’s when he realizes it’s because he’s not used to looking at this person from the back: it’s him.

It’s Dean in his brother’s arms, sliding a leg between Sam’s and leaning forward so Sam has no choice but to press his back fully to the trunk. Sam’s eyes go soft as he looks down at him, and it shouldn’t feel like a punch to the gut, but it does.

“Dean,” He says, and every hair on Dean’s own body raises, as if the Sam behind him had leaned forward and whispered it into his own ear.

And they kiss. 

Dean sees a flash of tongue as Sam presses down and the other Dean presses up, mouths falling open before they’ve even reached each other as if they want to eat each other alive. The hand that Sam’s got in Dean’s hair tightens, and Dean brings up to hold Sam’s ribs. Sam’s hair falls into his eyes between them so Dean can’t see their kiss anymore. The other Dean brushes his bangs away from his face, continuing the caress so he’s holding the side of Sam’s head.

And then, as if a switch flips, Dean’s hand in Sam’s hair goes tight, and he jerks Sam’s head back. Sam’s grip against Dean goes white-knuckled as Dean slams him fully against the tree, mouth slipping from his to bite at his jaw, his earlobe, his throat. 

Dean’s brain kicks back on like a radio after a dead stretch on the highway. Fuzzy silence explodes into Holy Shit That’s Sam That’s Me Sam Is Kissing Me Like He’s Going To Die.

Sam’s head tilts back, exposing more of his throat to Dean’s mouth, and his mouth falls open. Dean feels his own mouth go dry. Sam’s eyes—tilted heavenward—are open, foggy with lust in a way Dean has never seen this close. He’s seen Sam kiss people before, had walked in on him mid-fuck in an Iowa motel at some point, had seen him in all state of nakedness, by necessity and accident. 

But this is…different. Dean can feel his brain being rewired in real time.

He had heard these noises through motel walls and down the hall and through doors but every moan that this Sam made reverberated in Dean’s own throat. He can feel Sam’s sweat against his tongue, can feel his skin—rough and air-chilled and perfect—fill Dean’s palms, can feel his hands in his hair.

Sam jerks Dean’s mouth back to his, a harsh hand against his throat. It’s territorial, is what it is. Sam tilts his head suddenly and bites a mark just under Dean’s jaw, and Dean can see his own eyes go fuzzy mouth open in shock. The noise he makes is obscene, and he feels a throb run through him.

Sam says something that Dean can’t hear, but sees his own head nod frantically, making Sam’s teeth tug at skin. The bruise there is going to be monstrous when it appears, and Dean almost reaches up to his own neck, wants it to come away bloody, wants Sam’s teeth to leave a permanent mark there, proof that he was there, proof that he wanted to be there.

“Yeah,” the Other Dean keens, pulling back to look Sam in his eyes. Sam’s hair is mussed, and his eyes are half-lidded, wet lips flushed and kiss-swollen. Sam’s hips cant forwards against Dean’s and Dean can see the full straining in their jeans rub together. Dean’s mouth is completely dry, can feel a slow phantom denim drag against his cock. “You and me, Sammy.” 

A crack of a branch behind him.

Dean whirls around, and Sam meets his eyes. Dean knows his eyes were wide, can see his own look of astonished panic mirrored on Sam’s face, as if they had forgotten the other had existed in the moment, were surprised to find that they were not alone in the woods. 

This is his greatest desire—Sam almost melting against him, trust and love and craving for Dean dripping onto his tongue—and Sam is seeing it.

Sam looks fucking horrified.

“Dean,” Sam says, and he sounds fucking tortured. His mouth is twisted, jaw set, like he’s preparing for a fight, a punch to the jaw. Like he’s already been punched.

No.

No, it’s not.

It’s Sam’s turn, Dean realizes again, suddenly.

They had just finished Dean’s, so this…

This has to be Sam’s.

Sam looks like he’s seconds away from vomiting, an expression Dean knows from years spent with Sam on car rides, after concussions, after bar crawls and monster guts on his hands and bad gas station food. Sam is seconds away from a panic attack.

This.

This isn’t his greatest desire.

This is Sam’s worst nightmare.

It will show you your greatest fears, your greatest desires, whatever will slow you down.

Your greatest fears.

The Sam behind him moans again, but this time it sounds more animal than human.

“You’re mine, Sammy.” Dean hears his own voice say, low and growly, the Dean prop behind him. “Say it.”

Dean’s stomach drops through his fucking shoes.

Oh my god.

Oh my fucking god.

Dean’s gonna be sick. He’s going to be fucking sick.

Seeing his expression, Sam’s face twists even harder, and—are those fucking tears in his eyes?

Dean wants to rip his own eyes out. Panic, white-hot and sickening and fucking agonizing, claws at the inside of his stomach. Dean can hear his own breathing, quick and harsh in his ears, knows his chest must be heaving. 

Sam’s worst fucking nightmare—his greatest fucking fear—is his twisted, sick-fuck older brother pinning him down and finally taking what he’s always wanted. 

Sam, at his core—at his fucking center, stripped of all his protestations and equivocating and apologizing—is terrified of Dean. 

Dean scares him. 

He must have let something slip, a too-long look or a too-earnest joke or a too-real plea for Sam to stay, and Sam must’ve found out. And it must have haunted him. Stayed stuck, pinned to the back of his mind like a dagger three-inches-deep into hardwood. 

“Oh god,” Sam says, breathless and hollow. Dean looks back up, vision swimming, but Sam isn’t looking at him.

Dean turns back around and the Dean in front of him has sunken to his knees in the damp earth, a hand lifting Sam’s shirt so he can mouth at the place belt buckle meets skin.

His tongue is a flash in the night, and Dean can't look away from the rapturous expression on his face. He looks worshipful, adoring, and Dean has no idea how he knows that. He’s never seen it on his own face (doesn’t carry a damn mirror around with him) but knows immediately that it’s only ever targeted at one person. Knows that Sam knows now what it means.

“Stop,” He says, hoarse, surprised by his own voice. Sam is still at his back, taking a step closer as the other Dean’s hands reach for Other Sam’s belt. “Stop!”

He wants it to be over, is furious, is fucking terrified. Sam knew. Sam has known, the whole time. Knows enough to be scared. Knows.

Sam knows.

Dean wants it to be over. Wants to wake up on that shitty motel bed with a snap like it had all been a bad dream. 

“Dean,” Sam says, but it’s an echo as both Sams say it at the same time—one Sam in front of him, head thrown back against the trunk, hands in his hair and one behind him, alert and anxious. Dean makes a noise into his hands, is afraid he’s going to throw up all over his boots.

“Dean,” the Sam in front of him chants, love-soaked and more whine than word.

This has been the worst day of his life. Worse than losing Sam at Cold Oak, worse than the night Sam left for Stanford.

Sam hates him. There’s no other way about it: Sam’s goddamn highlight reel has been escaping Dean. His greatest fear is Dean whispering prayers into his skin, mouthing at the elastic of his boxers peeking above the waistband of his jeans.

“Dean, we have to go.” Sam says, rough hands at his shoulders. Dean shrugs him off, electrocuted. “This is what it wants right? To stop us. Cas said so.” 

Dean tries to make sense of that. Cas. Castiel. Heaven. 

Right. Heaven. The garden. They have to get to the garden. 

“I’m sorry.” Sam says, voice weak and cracked and too fucking close. Dean flinches, hard, jerking himself away from Sam when he tries to reach out again.

How messed up is that? Sam, apologizing for his worst nightmare because he knows that Dean wants it?

“Don’t.” Dean says, bile rising in his throat. How is it possible to throw up in Heaven? That feels like it shouldn’t be in the rulebook. His legs feel like bags of water, but he tries to push forward, turns his back on Dean and Sam now SamandDean as Dean’s mouth opens and—

“Dean, I’m so sorry,” Sam says, a sob.

Dean starts running.

He hears Sam’s breaths behind him, feels each pound of feet like swallowing glass.

~~~

They’re alive, and all things considered, it’s not an incredible improvement on matters.

Dean wakes up in the motel bed, chest mysteriously free of buckshot and not enough air in his lungs. Sam snaps to wakefulness beside him in the other bed. 

Proof that today has been the worst day in Dean’s life: it started with Sam being shot to death in front of him. 

Dean can’t look at him, as Sam turns immediately to him.

What was the point? What was the point of any of it?

Joshua was useless. God has abandoned them. He’s a great big bag of dicks, and he’s abandoned them all.

Sam died. Dean died. Sam is his soulmate—his literal other half, separated from him by skin and bones and that’s all—and he and Dean are a special case. They get each other, when the rest of the world gets just themselves. 

(It makes sense, in a way. Dean has always been a half-person. A shell to pour buckshot and venom into to make a real boy. His only saving grace was Sammy, was the job, was helping people. But now what does he have?) 

The only downside is that Sam’s only happy memories are ones with Dean absent. Even in Heaven Dean’s internal compass still points SamSamSam, and it’s pathetic. Sam found out at some point that Dean wants to jump his bones, that he dreams about kissing Sam in the moonlight and holding him to fall asleep and fuck his brains out and he’s fucking terrified. Greatest fear. Literal worst nightmare.

Dean’s first thought when he wakes up is Where’s my gun? and it’s not because he thinks Walt and Roy are still around. Finish the job, fuckers. He wants to swallow his lead and be done with it. He can’t be in this room with Sam anymore, can’t be anywhere with Sam anymore.

Dean can’t even escape him in death, now. Sam will always be tied to the freak who wants to screw his brains out. It would be better, Dean thinks, if Sam just thought it was a weird sexual thing. Dean’s screwed up, it’s no secret. But the Other Dean had been so damn prayerful that he knows that Sam knows the truth. Dean isn’t just screwed up—he’s festered, wretched, depraved.

“Dean,” Sam says. 

It’s fitting that the first word that comes out of his mouth once he’s alive again is ‘Dean.’ It was his first word when he was a baby. Dad had been passed out drunk on the couch and Dean had been teaching Sammy how to sort blocks by color and Sammy had slapped a big pudgy hand on Dean’s foot and yelled, “Dee-n!” and Dean had been a goner. 

Whole life shifted on its axis, age five, never recovered.

Dean slips off of the bed, almost hits the floor. His legs are wobbly and weak. Dean crosses the room, writes Walt and Roy on the motel stationary in case some memory curse tries to take Heaven away from him.

Dean’s life might have ended two hours ago (not his literal life but the life sitting on the bed opposite him, breathing air and tears in his eyes), but they shot Sam. They’re going to pay whether Sam looks at him again or not.

“Dean.” Sam says again, like it’s the only damn thing Sam knows how to say.

“Sam.” Dean acknowledges, but his throat is tight and it comes out more a whimper than anything else. Dean clears his throat.

“In. In Heaven—“ Sam starts, but Dean cuts him off immediately. He doesn’t want to hear anything Sam has to say. Dean is the fucked up one here. Dean is the one who has trespassed beyond belief.

He had thought he had kept Sam safe. He had thought that he had pressed himself into a small enough box that Sam would never feel the waves of MineSamPleaseLoveYouDon’tLeave that came off of Dean like radiation poisoning.

He had failed.

Dean Winchester was a failure in everything else, why would this have been any different? Dean wants to scream, wants to slam his head into a wall, wants to drink himself to death right here right now while Sam looks at him like his whole world is falling apart.

But instead, Dean asks,

“How long have you known?” His throat closes before he can ask the rest. How long have you known that I’m in love with you?

Sam’s eyes are fucking huge. He looks like he did when he broke one of Dean’s things. Like he does when they get into screaming matches and Sam goes one step too far. He swallows, hard, and Dean watches the bob of his throat.

“Forever. Always, probably.” Sam says, and Dean’s soul tries to leave his body again. Always.

Sam always knew that Dean was a twisted-up son of a bitch. He left for Stanford knowing. He died in Dean’s arms knowing. He betrayed him for Ruby knowing. He’s always known. Always.

There’s not enough air in the room, there’s not. Dean can’t breathe, he can’t—

“Dean, I’m so sorry. I didn’t think you’d ever find out—“ Sam says, babbling, so damn apologetic and earnest that Dean wants to throw up again. Sam was willing to sit there forever on the knowledge that Dean wanted him? He was hoping that Dean would never catch on to the fact that Sam knew about it? 

Sam wanted to be a martyr about it. He was willing to let Dean look at him sidelong forever. Willing to hear him jerk of in the shower and lean a hairsbreadth too close to him and kill everyone who even looked at Sam a little askance.

For what? To keep Dean happy?

“I gotta—“ Dean says, room spinning. There’s not enough air in here. Dean feels like he’s on a boat. He can feel the floor pitching underneath him, can feel his knees go weak and the air being sucked from his lungs.

Dean barely manages to grab his coat but doesn’t snatch the Impala keys from the table. He wouldn’t be able to drive even if he had. He can’t feel his hands. He can barely see—dark is encroaching on his vision and he can feel Sam’s body heat through his clothes across the room. He can hear Sam blinking, can hear his heart beating, and his ragged breaths on Dean’s neck.

“I’ll be back.” Dean manages, throwing open the door to the motel. Sam doesn’t even try to stop him.

Dean had trained him well—years on years of Dean ducking out when emotions ran high. When Dad and Sam would fight, Dean would get as far as possible, sitting outside on the curb or whatever it took. But the second Sam had too much, Dean would always materialize at Sam’s shoulder, pulling him away.

Sam didn’t know that Dean learned Dad’s cues. He knew the exact cadence that Dad would slip into his words when he was seconds away from throwing punches. Dad said certain phrases when he was gearing up, would tighten his fists at his sides, would start bringing Dean into the conversation even if he wasn’t in the room.

Dean would let his Dad get away with a lot, but he would kill him before he laid a hand on Sam, and their Dad knew it.

After Sam came back and started picking fights with him, now, instead of Dad (Is that what he is now? Dad?), Dean would start ducking out. He’d head to the bar, head to a park, would walk the block around their motel four or five or six times. 

So when Dean slammed the door behind himself, Sam didn’t stop him.

Dean crosses the lot and starts down the side of the road. He’ll pace this block a thousand times if he has to. He has to get this shaky adrenaline from his bones. 

It ended tonight. Whatever twisted-up shape he and Sam had managed to warp themselves into this time is gone. Dean doesn’t know how he can ever go back to living with Sam like normal after this.

Sam was willing to fall on his sword. He was willing to give up whatever sanity, whatever peace he could manage to find on the road just to keep Dean happy.

That kid was selfless and broken and too damn good for Dean to ever look at him again.

Dean is the problem. How could it not be something fundamentally wrong, twisted, fucked about him. He was so goddamn broken that his own soulmate—Sammy, Sammy—couldn’t stand to be around him. 

Sam’s—Sammy, his Sammy, big hazel eyes and grasping hands and knobby elbows and sniffling nose—best memories where times that he had left Dean. The worst night of Dean’s life was Sam’s best. Dean had gone through his Dad’s entire supply of whiskey in the truck that night he left for Stanford. He cried himself to sleep. He didn’t talk to Dad for the subsequent blur of nights and days and beer after beer until Dad slammed him against a motel wall and smacked feeling into him.

Flagstaff. Fucking Flagstaff.

Dean hadn’t eaten. The only time he had slept longer than an hour was when he passed out staring at the map that he had made on the motel wall like he was a case (Sammy, Dean’s baby boy gone in the night like a faceless vic in another town, far far away never to be seen again). Dad had thrown him onto one of the beds and let Dean sleep for twelve hours. Dean was so furious that he almost hit him.

Dad had hit him when he found out he had lost Sam. Sam’s school had called Dad to let him know that he hadn’t come to school (the little fucker had changed his emergency contact from Dean because he thought by the time Dad answered the phone it would have been too late) (he was right), and Dad had called Dean madder than he had ever heard him. He laid him out right there in the parking lot after he had finally made it back to the town he had left them in. Dean, running ragged calling everyone Sam had ever even looked at in that damn town, let him. He would have let Dad hit him again if he tried, atonement for losing Sam. He would’ve laid on the concrete forever, watching the stars pinwheel above him.

His Dad was a grown man, and he hit like one. Dean’s lip took a month to heal, it had split so deep. 

For two weeks, Sam was dead. For two weeks, Sammy had been red meat and insides being pecked at by crows. He had been kept in a cage, he had been turned by a werewolf, his legs had been cut off below the knees so he couldn’t escape a basement and a storage container and a regular suburban home. Every person that Dean passed on the street had taken him, had hidden him and Dean would kill them all, burn down every single building in this whole goddamn state until Sam—or what was left of him—was back in Dean’s arms. He had nightmares for months after they found him of someone holding Sam down and assaulting him, Dean stuck behind glass walls and iron bars and strong, unbreakable arms while Sam screamed and screamed and screamed.

Sam was mad when they found him, Dean remembers. Sam had sat in silence the whole drive home, after Dean had walked the dog to the nearest property. Dean didn’t talk to him for a goddamn month. Sam had gotten twitchy and whiny after the first week, but Dean could barely look at him.

It had felt like a betrayal. It was the first time that Dean realized that when Sam was given a choice between Dean and anything else, Dean would be left with an empty car and a bottle of whiskey in his right hand.

When Dean finally spoke (out of necessity, Dad had been out of town for a month, and Dean got laid out by the flu for a few weeks), Sam cried. He’d hugged Dean, pressing his face into Dean’s chest like he did when he was small. Dean hated him for it. He hadn’t earned those tears, like Dean had. Tears had to be fucking earned.

What would Dean do now?

Sam’s Heaven was Dean’s personal Hell. Fuck, they had used that once or twice in his stint downstairs: Dean begging Sam to stay, Sam shoving past him and leaving Dean with his small intestine still writhing in his hands. Sam would cleave them apart given any opportunity—the first opportunity—when presented with any choice that wasn’t Dean.

Dean wonders if Sam could do that, if he could cleave their Heaven in two because he can’t stand to look at Dean a second longer than he has to, never mind forever.

Dean might as well have killed Jessica himself. He set Sam up with Ruby by dying, he should have done something—anything—to get Sam out from underneath his skin. He should have tried harder to stop looking at him, should have torn his own eyes out of his skull. 

He should’ve left Sam when he had the chance.

~~~

When Dean comes back, he tries to hide his hand in his pocket. He had slammed it into the side of the motel thirty minutes ago, again and again and again until the noise in his head softened from a deafening roar into a broken whimpering.

He feels like a dog being let back inside after doing something naughty. 

His hand is a mangled wreck in his pocket. He’s positive he broke at least one bone, but it feels like such an act of agency over his own body—one that’s sorely needed after being Michael’s favorite chew toy—that he can’t be too angry. 

Sam is sitting on the curb, outside of a door that’s not theirs.

For a second, Dean thinks that Sam got a separate room from him. Sam can’t even stand to be in the same room as you, now that you know. He doesn’t have to hide it anymore, how much you disgust him.

It winds him, a hand reaching inside to twist his stomach around, and Dean almost turns back around to walk back into the night. He’ll sleep in the woods before he sleeps on the other side of the wall from Sam.

He’d rather be surrounded by cicadas and worms and dry leaves than pointedly separated from Sam’s quiet breathing.

Sam holds up a set of keys, and suddenly Dean is biting down on his tongue to prevent his tears. He can’t breathe through his swollen throat, can barely see Sam’s hulking form bent over himself on the sidewalk like a thirteen-year-old waiting for Dean to pick him up from school.

“Got us a new room,” Sam says. His voice is tense, as if he’s waiting for Dean to challenge him. “Figured we didn’t want to sleep in our own blood tonight.”

Us. We. 

Dean wants to eat the words alive. Wants to cup them in his palm and take them like pills.

Sam is allowing them to still be an us. Even if just for now. Sam hasn’t cleaved them yet. Dean nods, quickly. 

“Yeah. Good idea.”

Sam kindly doesn’t mention the crack in his voice. 

“I put the old sheets in bleach in the tub next door, and we can take ‘em down to the laundromat in the morning. Check out is at ten, so we should get up at seven, probably.”

Dean nods along dumbly, so grateful that his brother is such a planner, even in times of emotional/psychological warfare.

Sam opens the room next to their other one with the keys and Dean trails after him like a kicked dog. His eyes flick to the red-numbered alarm clock.

2:07 AM

Great. Dean does that math. Five hours of sleep for Sam. Definitely not the worst the kid’s ever gotten, but Dean won’t be sleeping tonight.

It’s such a benign thought, Dean realizes, in the face of the world ending. 

Dean’s duffle is already on his bed, which means that Sam must have moved it. It makes him feel strange, although he can’t exactly place what emotion he’s feeling.

Sam cleaned their other room, moved their stuff, and then waited for Dean outside on the curb for who knows how long. It leaves a bad taste in his mouth. 

Dean starts unpacking his stuff (which means that Sam had packed it). He stares down at a shirt that he had left on the floor of their other room, folded neatly at the top. Sam had picked up Dean’s stuff, folded it like he likes it, and packed his bags.

Sam is treating him like normal.

This should feel good, Dean should be exhaling in relief, low and slow. But instead, unexpectedly, heat blooms in Dean’s cheeks, the only warning he gets before the simmer in his stomach turns into a boil.

It’s almost worse that Sam is going about business as normal.

Sam is perfectly cordial while Dean feels like he’s going to crawl out of his skin.

Sam had said it himself—he had known forever—but the physical proof here in the creases of his Blue Öyster Cult shirt makes him want to vomit. 

Sam’s anger, Sam’s disgust, Sam’s hatred were justified. Sam’s indifference? It hurt more than it all combined. Sam not caring, Dean holding such little real estate in his brain that earth-shattering evidence of his love is another day for him.

It doesn’t make any sense. Dean wants to feel relieved. He wants to lay down on this bed and go to sleep and wake up and complain about the food that Sam gets them for breakfast. He wants to ride in the car and bite down on the rush in his chest when he looks over and Sam mouths the words to some random Rolling Stones song.

But he’s angry. It’s almost a relief, to feel anger. It’s more familiar than happiness or sadness to him, and he lets it swallow him whole as he looks at his half-open bag.

Sam steps into his line of sight. He looks down at Dean’s stuff and back up at him.

“You…” Dean says and Sam, a PhD in Understanding Dean’s Micro-Expressions, picks up on his thought immediately.

“I mean.” Sam sounds tired, and he sits heavily down on the other bed. “I’ve lived with it so long, it’s just normal to me.”

I’ve lived with it so long. I’ve lived with it so long.

It.

Dean’s twisted-up, toxic feelings for his literal brother are a thing. A little snafu in Sam’s life.

Dean doesn’t know who he’s madder at: Sam or himself.

Dean must have been bleeding this. Every exhale must have been “You’re the most important thing in my life and it doesn’t even scare me how much I’d be willing to do for you.” Every single song on the radio must have been a love song. Every turn away from Sam's searching gaze must have been “I only know how to love two things: Baby and you, and she’s easier to love because she can’t leave.” 

He must have been vomiting his love all over Sam’s shoes when he stitched him up, must’ve slipped it into Sam’s coffee, coughed it up over all his food and trail mixes from the gas station.

God, it must’ve been smothering.

Sam is so used to it.

Dean has to turn away. He paces away from the bed, hiding his throbbing hand back in his jacket pocket, and rubbing his other over his face. The rough canvas scrapes his nerves raw and he’s grateful for the mental reprieve. Every fiber in his being is focused on manageable physical pain for just that split second, and Dean is able to breathe again.

“Can we talk about it?” Sam asks, as quiet and penitent as a goddamn church mouse. Dean is already shaking his head before he turns back around.

“No.” He says. He doesn’t want to debrief the worst fucking experience of his life, thank you very much. He doesn’t want to know what Sam thinks about every detail.

Dean wants to throw his shit in the back of the Impala and drive far away, so far that Sam can never find him again.

“Dean—“

“No, we can’t, Sam.” Dean rubs his good hand through his hair. “I can’t talk about it.”

“I’m sorry.” Sam says, because he doesn’t care about what Dean wants. Never has. “You have to know that I didn’t want to hurt you.”

“So you were just gonna…what?” Dean snaps. “Let it fester until it killed me?”

Sam recoils. “I never wanted you to find out.”

Dean sets his shoulders, throws his head to the side. “God.”

He wants this to be over already. The fight is gone. Dean’s already lost—he’s lost everything—so he just wants to wave his white flag and get it over with.

“I did everything I could, okay?” His voice cracks, and he hates himself for it.

Sam stands, crosses the room until he’s in Dean’s space, and Dean steps back. Sam’s eyes are wild, and Dean doesn’t like the desperation in his tense posture. 

Dean tucks his other hand back in his pocket so he doesn’t have to touch Sam’s skin, even on accident.

“Dean, please.” Sam sounds so broken. “Yell at me. Throw shit, something.”

Dean shrugs his shoulders, unable to meet his gaze. He knows his eyes are brimming with saline, but hopes that Sam won’t notice. 

“What do you want from me, Sam?” Dean asks. “I don’t know what else I can do, here.” 

Beg on my knees? Shoot myself in the head? Dean would do either, takes his cues from Sammy. What’s the punishment he gets for loving him?

Sam is shaking. “I’m sorry, okay? I’m so sorry. It just kind of happened. You were so—You’ve always—Fuck. I can’t do this. How do I even start?”

Sam takes a bracing breath and starts talking fast like Dean is going to gag him, like he’s got a gun to his head.

“You know what you are to me, Dean. You always have.” Sam says, leaning farther into Dean’s space so Dean has no choice but to take an actual step back. “You’re the only person I have left, please don’t leave. Please don’t—“

Dean huffs a broken laugh, agony a physical weight in his stomach. Please don’t leave. They’re both so fucked up. Dean should leave on that alone. Sam will put up with whatever—even Dean’s mouth-breathing leering—because he’s all that Sam’s got. 

This was always going to happen, wasn’t it?

“Sam—“ Dean leans away, throat closing as if someone had crushed a hand around it.

“It’s Sammy.” Sam demands, half-manic. Dean’s never heard him like this when there’s not an actual threat on his life, and Dean guesses that’s what he is now. He’s Sammy’s greatest fear, a noose around his neck that just needs tightening.

“Jesus, Dean. Look at me, talk to me, damnit—Touch me, God—Fuck—anything,” Sam makes a move forward like he’s going to grab Dean by the shoulders but chickens out at the last second. Dean jerks his arm away anyway, rolling his shoulder.

Then, Dean’s world narrows to a point as Sam flinches.

Sam flinches. 

Dean doesn’t know if Sam thinks he was going to hit or kiss him, because apparently both equally frighten him. 

Dean hears a noise, and realizes it must have come from his own throat. Sam, eyes wide, chest heaving, is looking down at Dean with a wild look in his eye.

Dean knows he must look the same. Undone. His foundations cracked.

As he watches, Sam’s eyes harden. His jaw sets, throat clicks as he swallows. 

Sam grabs Dean, hard, on either side of his face and slams their faces together. Dean thinks it’s a head-butt before he feels Sam’s lips on his. 

Frozen.

Dean feels every muscle in his body lock up, can hear Sam’s exhale on his cheek as he breathes like an animal, panicked heaving. Dean’s teeth are sore from the impact and he can taste almost-broken-nose-ozone on the back of his throat as the bridge of his nose is ground into Sam’s cheekbone.

Dean’s eyes are open, and he can see Sam’s little flyaway hairs at his hairline, remembers trying to tame them when Sam was in middle school.

Sam. This is Sam.

The world should be ending. This shitty motel should be falling down around them, the stars should be exploding, the ground should be shaking.

But this is Sam.

It feels like kissing Sam, stale breath and sloping nose mashed alongside Dean’s. Dean’s nose is pressed to the mole that he had been daydreaming about kissing since he was a teenager.

Sam moves his mouth, and Dean opens on instinct at first. A swipe of tongue at his bottom lip and Dean has been starving since he was sixteen years old. He bites down, hard, on Sam’s bottom lip, a punishment, and Sam tilts his head even farther, mouth opening and noise slipping against Dean’s tongue.

Sam’s tongue is against he roof of his mouth, gentle and tender and Dean wants a fight, doesn’t know how to want something without it hurting.

Sam shoves him back, suddenly, and Sam’s mouth leaving his feels like someone rending his own skin apart. Sam’s chest his heaving, and his lips are kiss-swollen and pink. Dean can see the slight indent of his own teeth against his bottom lip, knows it must sting.

Dean now knows what the saliva shining on his bottom lip tastes like.

“Now you can hit me,” Sam says, voice rough and low.

Sam doesn’t duck. He doesn’t try to move, even though Dean has been teaching him how to dodge his punches since he was twelve. He doesn’t square his stance to take the punch, he just crumples against the bed like a marionette.

Dean’s ears are ringing, and he can feel Sam’s lips on his over and over again like a tape deck being rewinded and played. His hand has exploded in white-hot agony, and he knows that maybe a sprain is now definitely a break.

How dare he take Dean’s ignorance from him? He knows now what it’s like to kiss Sam, and it’s going to kill him. Dean can’t live with this information, doesn’t know how he can.

Sam’s face is wet with Dean’s blood, a smear of red-orange against his skin, and he seems to realize it a second after Dean does. Sam wipes his knuckles across his jaw with furrowed brows.

His eyes fall down to Dean’s hand, now shaking at his side.

“Dean,” He says, urgency sweeping away the body of whatever animal died in his voice a second before. “What happened?”

“Don’t you ever do that again, you understand?” Dean says instead, Sam’s invisible mouth on his slowing his words’ exit. “I don’t care what you think I want—you will never fucking kiss me again.” 

Sam flinches, but hasn’t taken his eyes off his hand. Dean knows it’s still covered in brick gravel from outside, knows that it probably looks as bad as it feels. Sam sits up, leaning forward so he can look at the injury.

His hand is shaking, trembling like a leaf in a breeze with the nerve and tissue damage. It’s going to be a bitch to clean. Dean’s not expecting Sam’s hand on his, fingers brushing his experimentally.

Dean flinches back on instinct and hisses through his teeth when the movement pulls a nerve that shoots up his arm.

Sam doesn’t ask him what happened again, just wordlessly rises and starts rifling through his bag. He comes back with their emergency kit, a rare bottle of rubbing alcohol in his hand.

He sits back on the bed, looking up at Dean with a hard set to his jaw and a challenge in his eye. A bruise, pink and darkening rapidly is already forming on the jut of his jawbone, visible under the smear of Dean’s blood. They don’t break eye contact, and Dean feels himself taking a step forward. 

For one insane instant, Dean wants to lean forward and lick his blood from Sam’s skin.

They’ve always been able to communicate silently, but Dean doesn’t know who’s winning in this conversation. Doesn’t know if there can be a winner this time. Sam blinks first, and Dean tries to track his irises as he looks down at his hands. 

“Sit down,” Sam says, and Dean sits. Sam starts taking stuff out of the kit, an ace bandage and a cotton sheet for his knuckles. 

It was always a policy never to let their wounds fester, no matter what else they would. Dad had drilled it into them as young as he could that the second you were out of direct fire you’d take care of what you could. It didn’t matter if you killed a thing if it killed you right back.

Is that what they were? Out of the line of fire?

Dean remembers sitting a Sam down that wasn’t talking to him at a kitchen table and resetting his dislocated shoulder. Sam had followed wordlessly, anger seeping from him like water from a sponge. He had stood up silently from the table as soon as Dean was done, applying butterfly bandages to a cut on his head with the hands of a surgeon and the scowl of a Halloween mask. 

Caring for each other was ingrained somewhere inside of them, biological. 

Dean thinks that that’s what must have happened. He doesn’t know how he could have avoided what he feels for Sam. His eyes every shade of brown and green and grey and yellow and his pithy attitude and smarter than Dean could ever hope to be and heart so exposed it dripped blood over everything he touched.

Sam had an innate gravity—anyone in his orbit longer than two minutes could feel it. A pull that Dean was too weak to resist. A righteous man, Cas had said all those years ago. Dean had been too weak to hold out, a ball of sense painpleasuredrinkskinmakeitstop. Sam was inevitable, biological, ingrained on Dean’s insides like Cas’s runes on his ribs.

Sam hating him must have been ingrained, too.

Could half a soul hate the other?

Yes. Dean thinks, as a tendril of hair falls into Sam’s eyes as he presses alcohol-soaked cotton to his knuckles. He sees Sam’s smile, hears his laugh, as he pets the damn dog in Flagstaff.

Sam had known forever. He had been trying to get away forever.

Sam might not hate him, but it can’t be love. Fear. Trapped under the arm that Dean had thought he loved to press himself under. Chafing, terrified, and desperately trying to hold up the weight of a love too heavy to bear. 

There’s something poetic, probably, about Sam picking brick gravel out of Dean’s knuckles. He runs his fingernail underneath one stone, scraping Dean’s blood and skin with it. Dean’s blood under his fingernails. Sam laser-focused as he picks and prods at his puffy skin, careful not to leave anything behind. There’s something there, probably. 

Sam wraps Dean’s knuckles like he has a million times before. It’s efficient, almost ruthlessly so. Dean sees a thirteen year old under his bangs, tip of his tongue held between his teeth as he focuses, barely visible through parted lips. Sammy had always taken Dean’s injuries so seriously, like one wrong twist would amputate his arm. 

There was a religiosity to it, Dean realizes now as Sammy winds the white bandage at different angles to keep it secure. Dean wonders what Sam was thinking when he was younger as he did this, what he’s thinking now, if it’s changed. 

He wonders if Sam knew then that Dean wanted to kiss him. If he knew that Dean’s lingering glances and frantic insistence that Sam stop trying to sleep with his head in Dean’s lap meant more than just that.

Before Dean would leave on a hunt, Sam would always say goodbye with a ferocity, a threat and a prayer pressed to Dean’s skin through the medium of Sam’s gaze. His eyes would skip right over Dad and land just south of Dean’s chin. “I’ll see you.” He would say, hard and unyielding like iron. There was a religiosity to that, too. 

Was Dean the god or the one trying to take Sam’s god away?

Did Dean imagine that? Did he force that? Make it so obvious that Sam felt like he owed it back to Dean? Dean was the only thing that kid had for so long that maybe he hadn’t realized—couldn’t realize—what mold Dean was pouring him into. 

“I won’t let this change anything,” Sam says, suddenly. Dean looks up at him, a little angry that Sam had tried to breach the subject again. Dean might try to hit him. 

Sam’s chewing on the inside of his lip, a nervous habit he had developed at age eleven when he developed the ability to be self-conscious. He would come back from middle school sometimes with his bottom lip bloody and Dean had to be talked off the ledge because he thought someone was doing it to him. No one was better at hurting Sam than Sam was. No one was better at hurting Dean than he was, either.

Dean knows what the skin feels like on the inside of his lip now. Dean hates him for it.

“You should,” Dean says.

Sam’s mouth twitches, but he doesn’t say anything else. Dean wants to pull his hand away, but Sam is pulling at the edges of his bandage, making sure the fabric lays flat. Dean lets his hands be maneuvered, closes his eyes and tries to memorize the feel of Sam’s sure fingers. 

This is the last time he’ll let Sam touch him.

Sam doesn’t deserve it, Dean doesn’t deserve it, they don’t deserve the shit that all of their touches will mean from now on.

I’ve seen what you look like when I kiss you. I know what your throat looks like with my teeth marks on it. I know what it looks like with your dick in my mouth, you know that I want to have it there.

“Can you—“ Sam starts to say, but he cuts himself off, hard, like he had just run into a wall. Dean looks up.

Sam’s hand lands on his sternum, hard. His eyes are wide, searching, as his fingers splay wide.  It’s like he reached into Dean’s chest and pulled. His heart tries to tear through his bones to fit into the curve of Sam’s palm.

“What—“

“You took it off.” Sam says, eyes wide and horrified. “Oh god.”

The amulet. Dean looks away from Sam’s eyes, already brimming with tears. He had yanked it over his head on his walk, considered throwing it into the woods.

It was given to Dean by a boy who trusted him, who looked at him with stars in his eyes and trust pressed to the back of his teeth. With a kid who wanted help with his math homework so he could make Dean feel smart and who hated his guts sometimes and let Dean tuck him against his side.

That boy is dead. He’s been dead since he found out that his older brother wanted to fuck him silly. That his other brother hates every person he looks at because it’s not him. That his older brother wants and wants and wants. 

Dean isn’t the older brother who can love Sam unselfishly any more than Sam is the boy who trusted him to.

But he had tucked it into his pocket, unable at the last second to go through with it. It’s a piece of Sam, proof that Sam had wanted to own him once upon a time. 

And Dean is too selfish with his pieces of Sam, had kept the toy solider that he had shoved into the door of the Impala and a letter Sam had written him when he was thirteen and some of Sam’s baby teeth in an empty Altoids tin box in the glovebox so John couldn’t catch him being sentimental and kept all of Sam’s tapes from when he was a teenager, would listen to them when he had gotten really fucked up on a hunt and his finger hovering over Sam’s number on his speed dial even after Sam had blocked him. 

This would be another relic, another offering to the temple of a boy that didn’t know he was being worshipped.

But now he did.

What is Dean supposed to do with that?

Sam snatches his hand back from Dean’s chest like he had been burned, eyes still fixed to the spot on Dean’s chest where it was supposed to be.

“Did you throw it away?” Sam asks, and his chest hitches like he had forgotten to breathe.

Dean swallows. “Yeah.”

Sam turns away sharply, dropping Dean’s injured hand. The room feels very big, then, as Sam walks away. Everything always feels big when Sam walks away.

That motel room in Flagstaff, Arizona was the biggest room Dean had ever been in.

When Sam turns back around, he looks more tired than Dean has seen him in a long time. There are tears on his cheeks, but Dean doesn’t remember hearing him letting them fall—no change in breath, no hitching of his shoulders.

“I can go.” Sam says, finally.

And there it is.

Sam, fucking back off.

Dean shrugs. “Whatever you want.”

Sam laughs, hollow. “No, it’s not, is it?” His eyes are fire and he’s spitting the words like they disgust him. “You don’t care what I want—you never have. It’s all about you.”

Dean’s vision whites out, and he stands because he can feel adrenaline start pumping through his veins again, wants Sam to start throwing punches so he can throw some back. “My whole life is about you. Surely you can fucking see that now.”

Sam’s face twists. “So that’s what this is?” Sam’s eyes drop down to his bare neck and skid away like it hurts to look at.  “You’re gonna give up on me? Just like that?”

Just like that. Like Dean hasn’t spent the past twenty years on his knees begging this kid to stay.

“Give up on what, Sam? You clearly don’t give two shits about me.” Dean thinks about the family on Thanksgiving. Sam didn’t care what Dean could give him—what Dean would burn down and who he would kill to give him—because it just wasn’t what Sam wanted. Everything Dean can cough up is imperfect.

“You’re my brother.” Sam says, like that’s supposed to mean anything to Dean anymore. They were literally made for each other, two halves of the same soul cleaved into two. Some sick fucking cosmic joke. Brother meant skinny calves pressed to his in a motel bed, it meant scraping money together to take him to the aquarium and spending hours listening to him talk about tuna or sharks or whatever that kid wanted to talk about, it meant having wet dreams about your kid brother’s thighs and making him oatmeal the next morning that didn’t stick to the pot.

“I’m not your brother anymore.” Dean says, numb to it all. Sam knows. Sam kissed him. Sam’s leaving again. Can’t stop leaving.

Dean can’t make him stay.

Sam makes a noise, wounded and angry.

“Don’t say that to me.” Sam bites down on his bottom lip, and Dean wants to press his thumb there and free it, see if his teeth and Sam’s have lined up.

He hates Sam, hates himself, hates them—hates what the angels have made them, hate what they have twisted themselves into. He hates Sam for leaving, he hates himself for wanting him to stay. 

Dean could cut his heart out of his chest and give it to him and Sam would give it back, disgusted by how much it bled, horrified that Dean would try to give it to him in the first place. 

It’s a miracle that Sam had lasted this long, a miracle that he survived under the weight of it. Atlas holding up something heavier than the Earth, more writhing and disgusting and personal. 

“No, Sam. I’ve made your life a living Hell. Our Heaven—our rare-case, once-in-a-freaking-trillion special-case Heaven—is you leaving me. Over and over and over again.” Sam flinches, mouth twisting, and he turns away. Dean grabs him by the arm, spins him back around, grip iron around his bicep. “You can’t escape me even if you wanted to.”

Dean grits his teeth, lets go of Sam’s arm because he’s terrified of what he’ll do if he keeps him. “I’ll be there at the end of the road for you eventually. I’ve got you trapped, and I don’t know how to let you go.” 

At the end of it all, Dean’s going to walk into an empty room that was meant for two. Because Sam’s going to craft his own future, always has, any future that leaves Dean behind. Kid’s going to rewrite the laws of metaphysics so he can finally fucking breathe air that Dean hasn’t given him.

“I’ve spent my whole life wanting to lock you up and make sure that no one else can ever touch you again.” 

Sam inhales, sharply. His eyes go wide. Fear. Good. Dean’s on a roll, doesn’t know if he can stop, doesn’t know if he wants to. It’s a dam that Dean’s been leaning against for twenty years, feeling the water trickling down his back, legs shaking, blood vessels popping in his eyes.

“I’ve daydreamed of killing your high school girlfriends and wanted to be your first kiss and spent so goddamn long trying to hide it that I’ve apparently given you a complex.”

It’s important that Sam knows that, makes a clean break here and now because Dean can feel the itchiness of his skin starting to necrotize where he’s fused him and Sam into a lock that Sam can’t pick.

“Dean—“ Sam says, breathless and eyes bright. It sounds like relief, which is so strange that Dean almost lets him interrupt, but his tongue is tripping over itself he’s trying to get the words out.

“No, Sam. You wanted to talk about it so we’re going to fucking talk about it.” Dean’s skin is sparking like the flint roller on a lighter. “I threw that shit away because I’m not your goddamn brother.”

The amulet burns in Dean’s pocket and if he were left alone with it he might have the strength to actually throw it away, drop it in a trashcan like it means nothing because apparently that’s what Dean means to Sam.

Dean’s been hoarding offerings and Sam has been hoarding keys. 

“I am the shit that we gank on the daily—the creeper in the goddamn park.”

Sam starts advancing, eyes focused and intense and manic. Dean plants his feet, unlike Sam. If he’s going to take a punch, he wants to stay on his feet.

Sam crosses the distance in the time it takes to inhale, and Dean tilts his head, ready for it.

Hands on his face, Dean closes his eyes, but nothing happens. He expected Sam to take him to the ground now that Dean’s rubbed his face in it. I want you. I’ve wanted you more, deeper than you thought, down to marrow.

Sam’s hands are gripping Dean by the sides of his head, and Dean can’t open his eyes, doesn’t want to see whatever light is slipping from Sam’s eyes. 

“Dean,” Sam says, a breath. “Dean. Please.”

Dean opens his eyes. Sam has tears in his eyes, his mouth is trembling, and he’s closer than Dean thought. He’s a breath away, and Dean can see the water in his eyes swelling. 

“What did we see in the woods?” He asks, and Dean can feel himself shut down. He tries to shove Sam off but he only has one good hand and Sam isn’t letting him go. 

Dean’s been too careful with allowing himself to touch Sam, and this—Sam’s hands on his face—is alarming, as threatening as his violence. This is the most he’s felt of Sam’s skin in months when he hasn’t been bleeding out. Maybe that’s what this is, a final parting, Sam sending him into the unknown. His skin is too warm on Dean’s face, and it prickles uncomfortably with pinpricks of heat.

“We saw us. I was kissing you.” Dean says, and his throat is so dry that the words are a croak.

“What was it?” Sam says, fingernails digging into the back of Dean’s skull. "Whose was it, Dean?”

“It was yours.” Dean says, despairingly. Sam never gives an inch, will never let up now that he has his teeth in Dean’s throat. “It was your greatest fear.”

Sam blinks, and a heavy second passes. Sam exhales shakily and his eyes flutter closed. Dean tries to wrestle away from him before he starts doing something really stupid like hitting him again or throwing up, but Sam won’t let go of him.

His eyes open, and they’re almost grey.

“It was yours.” Sam says, and his lips tremble their way into a smile. “I thought it was yours.”

Dean blinks.

“What?” He says. His brain isn’t working. Sam’s words make no sense, and Dean tries to understand them as if Sam had just started speaking French. 

His brain kicks on with a whir like air conditioning and oh, maybe he thought that it was Dean’s desire that he was seeing, all his sick fantasies on display, Dean’s knees in the dirt and his mouth on Sam’s stomach. 

Dean tries to think of Sam’s face in the forest—fear, agony, anxiety. 

That would make sense. Dean’s carefully examining Sam’s face, tries to see it there now but only sees Sam’s watery eyes, his small smile.

“Okay,” He says. It’s not Sam’s greatest fear. That’s a relief, maybe, but Dean’s chest is still tight. That means that Sam still knows. It means that Heaven cracked Dean open and it was still SamSamSam and Sam was still AnythingButDeanAnythingButDean. 

It should change something, but Dean doesn’t think it does. It just makes him more pathetic.

“Okay.” He says, again. He feels like he just went three rounds with the inside of a washing machine. 

Sam’s brow furrows and he doesn’t try to stop Dean when he pulls away this time. His fingers are pulled away slowly, agonizingly, like a slow rip of velcro. 

“Okay?” Sam repeats. His hands are still slightly raised away from his body, like he doesn’t want to touch his own skin after he had had Dean’s.

“Okay.” Dean confirms, flexing his fingers on his bad hand. He feels the tug of skin against fabric and it makes his skin crawl. 

“I won’t stop you from leaving.” Dean says, reassuring, and isn’t that a culmination? Dean age sixteen throwing up in Flagstaff, Arizona as soon as he had walked into that cabin and found Sam asleep on a couch with his hand in a bag of pretzels, Dean age twenty-one following Sam to the bus stop, saying anything and everything to get Sam to turn around, to look at him, Dean  with a knot in his throat watching Sam jog up the steps of his apartment building to a plate of cookies and a dead girlfriend.

Dean, thirty-one, watching his brother’s mouth part in surprise, as Dean pries open the bars of his ribcage and tells Sam to leave.

“What?” Sam says, and his brow furrows farther, eyes widening. “You still want me to leave?”

Ha.

“I want you to do what you want to do, Sam.” Dean says, barely resisting the urge to sit down on the bed. His legs are weak, and his eyes are suddenly so heavy.

He died today. Sam died today.

Sam had died three feet away from him, slumped against the head of the bed like he was six again, all messy hair and unlined face. Dean doesn’t think he’s even processed that, the complex grief packed on top of each other like layers of snow.

Walt, Roy, Dean remembers. His hands shake.

“What happened?” Sam says, a dog with a bone clenched in his stupid fucking teeth. “You were with me for a second.” 

Dean shrugs, doesn’t particularly care to understand what Sam’s hinting at. On his next inhale, his chest hitches and expands farther than he thought it could, catching up with the breaths he had apparently not been taking.

“No, Dean. I’m not letting this go.” Sam says, like Dean had asked him to. Like he might’ve stopped if Dean had. “We were in the forest. We saw…We saw my greatest desire and—“

Sam might’ve continued to ramble, but Dean’s brain goes white. 

Just that, just white, like static.

Like when you hit your head on something, taste a spray of ozone in your mouth, the jolt of your teeth, eyeballs going blurry and watery, trying to make sense of anything in front of you.

And then, like Dean had been driving through a dead zone on the interstate and picked up on a passing radio station, Sam’s voice starts again.

“—but it wasn’t. It wasn’t either of ours.” Sam’s voice comes back hesitant when Dean doesn’t respond. “It wasn’t, right?"

Dean would like to respond, but he can’t feel his teeth, his tongue, his throat, the things he needs to make noise. 

“Dean?”

He looks up, and Sam is poised above him, a hand frozen mid-reach for Dean. Dean didn’t even realize he had sat down. He’s sitting on the edge of one of the beds, hands limp at his sides, and had been staring down at Sam’s knees. Dean is reminded of Sammy finding a cat by the side of the road. The kid had found it walking back from school and had stopped dead almost in the middle of an intersection. He had held a hand out to it, gentle and earnest.

Sammy was a bleeding heart. Sam’s still a bleeding heart, and Dean doesn’t know if he wants to let Sam to bleed on him.

“It wasn’t your worst fear, was it?” Sam asks, and this is a giant cosmic fucking joke. It has to be.

“No.” Dean says, a croak. “No, it wasn’t.”

Sam’s face lights up like the fucking sun. He sits down heavily on the other bed, leans into Dean’s face like Dean’s got secrets written in pen on his cheeks.

“Which means.” He says, but doesn’t finish. “It.” He’s searching Dean’s face desperately, mouth twitching up into an uncontrollable smile like he’s trying not to laugh, giddy and confused and twitching like a puppy trying to be good.

Dean’s mouth is still numb.

Sam.

No.

No, it’s not true.

Sam’s…confused. Or lying.

Because if Sam….

No.

Because if Sam.

Loved him.

If Sam loved him.

Then…Then—

Dean’s shaking his head, and it must be too fast because he’s dizzy, he’s going to throw up. 

If Sam wanted him, then why has Dean been ripping his lungs out, strip by strip for decades? If Sam loved him, then why are his favorite memories Flagstaff and Stanford and Thanksgiving with the goddamn Brady Bunch? If Sam wanted him—wait, for how long? In what way? Sam said that was his, his greatest desire, Sammy opened his mouth and said out loud that he wanted Dean, Sam said that Dean with his knees in the dirt and his tongue on Sam’s stomach was something that he wanted—

What the fuck is he talking about?

Sam wants him.

Dean grabs Sam by the front of the shirt, hauls him in for a kiss so brutal that Dean feels his lip split against Sam’s teeth. Sam is already panting, rising half off the bed to crouch over Dean. His hands are on Dean’s shirt, and they’re in a mad grapple for power—though Dean’s not sure if they’re trying to take it or surrender it.

Sam tastes like the damn salad he had for dinner and Coke and something that Dean’s never felt before, never tasted before.

Sam is breathing directly into Dean’s lungs, and Dean is heaving in, trying to take whatever Sam will give him, wants to pour Sam directly down his throat.

It’s barely a kiss, more a scramble of tongues, Sam sliding his tongue against Dean’s molars, Dean trying to cut his tongue on Sam’s canines.

Dean feels half-insane, and he shoves up, knocking their heads together so he can take Sam to the bed behind him, landing on him so hard that he wouldn’t be surprised if he bruised Sam’s rib with his unwieldy elbows and body that he doesn’t want, that he doesn’t feel connected to.

Why would Dean ever need a body again when Sam is right there? When Dean can shove himself down his throat, let Sam devour him whole?

Dean feels a deep panic in his bones, an urgency that surprises him. 

Now, now, now, a voice in Dean’s head chants. It’s like a Black Friday Sale—Dean’s kicking and screaming and everything must go, everything must go, there’s nothing left.

He has to do this before everything must go, before there’s nothing left, before Sam realizes that wait—why would he want this?

This is Dean: whiskey-swilling, self-hating, brother-fucking, Dad-in-a-new-pair-of-jeans Dean. Who would want that?

Dean’s hand goes to tangle in Sam’s hair as their kiss starts to melt from frigid shards into an actual kiss when he tries to bend his fingers and agony shoots up his arm.

He thinks for a moment that Sam’s stabbed him.

But then Sam’s hand grabs his hand and it’s dulled through a layer of fabric and Dean remembers that he’s fucked up his hand beyond recognition.

Or function. 

“Fuck.” Dean says, panicked now, because if he can’t touch Sam then how is he going to touch Sam—

His world flips as Sam shifts their positions like Dean weighs nothing more than the two pennies he’s worth. Dean is now pressed to the bed, and he scrambles back so Sam can maneuver, crawl over him and cage him in with his body.

He sits over Dean for a second, and gently pushes Dean’s reaching hands away.

“Let me.” He says, and Dean doesn’t know what Sam’s asking to do but Yes.

Anything Sam wants. Yes.

Let me take care of you. Yes. Let me fuck you. Yes. Let me go. Yes.  

When Sam pulls his shirt off, Dean’s breath catches in his throat.

It’s so easy sometimes to forget how strong Sammy is. He works for his body, more than Dean does, and it shows. He’s got thick bands of muscle around his arms, sweeping down his torso. It’s a male model look, one Dean is torn between wanting and wanting. 

He feels torn in two:

Sam got the flu in the tenth grade and it was bad—really bad. Dean had called and called Dad but he hadn’t picked up. Sam stopped eating, and Dean had been able to see his ribs outlined, too thin and small to hold his brother together. They looked like bird bones, delicate and frail and hollow. Every time Sam took his shirt off for months, for years, Dean would check his ribs.

It was agonizing to see his ribs post-Stanford. It was the most skin he had managed to pack around them, and it was physical, tangible proof that there was someone out there that had taken better care of Sam than Dean could.

And then there’s the part of him that wants to press a hand to Sammy’s sternum, feel the heat of skin and the shift of muscle. A part that sees the forest and not the trees, sees the broad line of Sam’s shoulders and the heft of his body as he leans over Dean, tall broad expanse of chest.

Maybe they’re not two, maybe it’s just Dean, all of Dean, watching Sammy, always Sammy.

Dean checks his ribs. Dean tracks the breaths he takes, eyes catching on dusky nipples and strong jaw as he leans over Dean, claims his mouth again.

Dean makes a purely embarrassing noise against his mouth, lets his one good hand trail over Sam’s shoulders.

Skin. Skin skin skin. Dean’s hand is impossibly hot against Sam’s shoulders, can feel every pore, every divot, every pucker of his scars against his fingertips.

He wonders, distantly, what his own hands feel like.

Do they feel like pure light on Sam’s skin, like Dean’s burning a hole in him? Do they feel like sandpaper, coarse and awful and uncomfortable? Do they feel familiar or alien?

Dean leans forward and tries to take his own shirt off, needs more of Sam everywhere, needs him inside of his goddamn lungs, but can’t manage with his hand.

Sam grabs Dean by the front of his shirt, hauls him into sitting position and Dean’s shirt is off before he can even process it happening. It shouldn’t be hot, being manhandled like a fucking doll but it’s Sam and his mouth swallows any protest Dean could have anyways.

His kisses are ruinous, and Dean’s not a poet, he’s really not. Kissing is fine, he guesses, and he doesn’t mind it as long as it’s on the way to the main event.

But this? Dean could do this forever. Sam’s tongue tangles with his, a lazy familiarity that makes Dean throb down to his bones. Arousal burns low in his stomach, and Dean shifts up, feels the hard muscle of Sam’s thigh against his cock and sparks explode across his vision, skittering across the dark.

He can’t stop the noise that comes out of his throat, and Sam grabs his thigh, hard, pulling it up and forward so Dean is practically grinding into Sam.

“Fuck!” Dean groans, throwing his head back. It shouldn’t be this much, this fucking consuming, but Sam’s lips are on his throat and Dean feels like a goddamn ocean, roiling and disastrous and able to take out anything in his path. 

“Shit,” Sam says, mostly breath, into Dean’s mouth. He sounds overwhelmed, overcome, and Dean’s spine is melting. Sam grinds Dean forward again, and Dean has one second to register the hot brand of Sam’s cock through his jeans—holy fuck—before he’s distracted by the rough, scorching slow grind of pressure against his own dick.

Sam’s thighs are goddamn big—all muscle and give and skin—and Dean could write sonnets, could write academic papers (if he could figure out how to do that), about them.

“Sam,” Dean says, just to say it, just so he can feel how it sounds when it’s his voice in Sam’s mouth.

“Yeah,” Sam says. It’s not a question, just an acknowledgement. This is me, I am here. Dean kind of loves him for it and can feel his chest go fizzy and warm and tame like a can of soda opened in the summer. 

Which feels weird when paired with Sam’s slow grind into his body.

Sex—and Dean’s brain goes blank, goes absolutely fucking empty, is that what this is, is that what they’re going to do—has never been like this. It’s been sexy and passionate and serious and lazy and casual but it has never been this. Sam bumps his nose into Dean’s and chokes a little laugh, a giggle, into his mouth. 

Dean’s heart aches and his dick is throbbing and he can feel Sam smile against his mouth. It feels like coming home, almost. Like sitting back down in the Impala after a dangerous hunt. Or curling upstairs in Bobby’s house on that small rickety-ass twin bed, Sam a sweaty brand pressed along his front like they used to when they were children. 

If Dean were pressed (gun held to his head, and maybe not even then), he would admit that that’s where he felt the most safe: dust motes curling through the air on lazy summer afternoons and warm yellow light slatting in through the blinds with Sammy upstairs at Bobby’s house, dinner frying downstairs and nothing but time and Dean’s boy safe and happy next to him.

This doesn’t feel like that, but it doesn’t not feel like that, either.

It feels like something new and terrifying that’s going to rock Dean down to the most basic parts of him, but it also feels like loving Sammy has always felt. 

Sam’s mouth trails away from his and Dean tries to chase it but Sam starts mouthing at his jaw and Dean’s brain lights up like a billboard.

His head slams down against the pillow as Sam starts in on his neck. Dean squeezes his eyes shut, because Sam is everything.

Sam is a hard, heavy line against his front. Shoulders boxing him in, hot cock burning a hole through Dean’s jeans, thigh still grinding a slow circular movement against his dick. Dean can smell their shared shampoo and the gritty motel soap and rubbing alcohol on his hands. And Sam sets in.

He starts slow, just a bite of teeth and a soothing swipe of tongue, but soon he’s leaving a mark in earnest. He’s mouthing at Dean’s neck like he wants to convince Dean’s skin to part for him, to wrap his teeth around Dean’s arteries and throat and chew. 

Dean’s toes curl and he lets his head fall to the side, eyes fluttering open and closed with each pull of Sam’s mouth.

“Yes.” He pants, doesn’t realize it came out until Sam’s moving down, starting a new mark on his throat. Dean wants to be covered in them. He already knows that Sam’s finger marks are going to be left on his hips. He’s going to hoard these, too, like he hoard everything about Sam. 

Dean loves hickeys, always has. He loves giving them, loves taking them. He loves the stares he gets when he’s got them on his neck. It feels like power. Yes, I am wanted. You want to look like me and can’t. 

He loves the intimacy of it, temporary ownership bandied about like raffle tickets. 

Dean doesn’t know if he’s felt anything more intimate than Sam’s tongue licking the salt from the hollow of his throat.

Sam’s got an oral thing—Dean’s known this forever. Sam’s always got to be doing something with his mouth, would shove his fingers in there when he was a toddler, would start chewing gum and pencil caps and straws when he got older. Dean had wondered when he got Sam back if he could stop Sam’s soft mouth noises in the passenger seat as he chewed on his fingernails by shutting Sammy up with his cock. Or his tongue. Or just stick his own fingers in Sam’s mouth, feel the silk of his tongue on his knuckles. 

Sam’s always got to have something in his mouth, and now that thing was Dean.

The thought alone is enough to beat a noise from him—cracked and broken and vibrating against Sam’s lips—and okay, maybe Dean has a mouth thing, too. 

Dean knows that in the morning he’ll have a string of marks on his neck, even if Sam leaves again. At least temporarily, he’s got proof of Sam in his skin.

“Dean,” Sam says, and Dean can feel his lips move against his neck, throbbing and tender. “What do you want?”

It’s good that he asked it when he can’t see his face. Dean doesn’t know what his face does, but knows it’s probably not good.

What does Dean want?

“Anything.” He says, and wonders if Sam likes feeling his voice through his throat because he hasn’t moved, just the continuous, slow, maddening grind of his hips. “You. Anything.”

He bites down on the ‘anything you’ll give me’ that almost escapes, because he knows it’s too revealing. 

Sam buries his face farther into Dean’s neck, and it dawns on Dean that maybe Sam is hiding his face too as he says,

“I want you in me.”

Dean’s feels sparks down to his toes, has to swallow hard because his brain just crashed like the internet does if Dean watches porn for too long.

“Fuck.” Dean says, because he didn’t even consider that, didn’t even acknowledge it as a possibility because Sammy, his Sam, inside. The idea that Sam could want him like that makes his brain melt out of his ears. He figured they’d end tonight with mutual hand jobs and a promise never to talk about it again, but if Dean can have Sam, he’ll never want anything else. “Yes. Yes, fuck.”

Sam pulls back, and there is pink high in his cheeks like he had been drinking, his lips flush and wet. Dean brings him back down in a helpless kiss, sucking his bottom lip back into his mouth.

Sam is fumbling with something, and Dean doesn’t care what it is. Dean hears a zipper, hears fabric, feels Sam’s hand slam into his thigh as he tries to maneuver. His whole world is Sam’s mouth, the warmth of his bare chest, the calm darkness behind his eyelids.

Sam leans back, and Dean chases his mouth, presses kisses to it until he can’t follow anymore.

He’s sure he makes a noise, but it’s cut off abruptly as he realizes what Sammy was doing. He’s kicking his jeans the rest of the way off, his boxers with them. He’s naked, now.

He’s naked.

Dean’s mouth goes dry. He has to swallow hard, blink a couple of times but no, Sam’s still there. He’s looking a little awkward as Dean looks his fill, half perched on the bed like he’s unsure if he’ll be welcomed back.

He’s fucking huge. Dean’s brain goes a little sideways trying to imagine that fitting inside of him. His cock is a monster, straining hard and curved slightly up and already wet at the tip. Dean doesn’t think about dicks much, he really doesn’t. But he’s going to be thinking about Sam’s until he dies. Probably after, too. Next time, Dean promises, mouth watering.

“Jesus.” Dean says, involuntary, and Sam huffs a laugh.

“Fuck you,” He says, warm and indulgent like Dean is being particularly endearing. Dean doesn’t feel endearing. He feels hard enough to cut rock.

Sam sits back astride Dean’s lap, and Dean can feel the strong muscles of his legs, the shifting of his body weight. Dean places a shaking hand on Sam’s leg.

Dean remembers placing bandaids to those knees. He knows that the jagged line hidden by wiry leg hair was the result of Sam cutting himself on astroturf at soccer practice. He remembers pressing a kiss to the bandaid because Sam was nine and ate that shit up with a spoon. It was the only thing that got him to stop crying. 

Dean remembers Sam getting the scar on his upper thigh, a poltergeist in a hotel in nowheresville Montana, Dean’s hands pressing down on his little-kid leg, and screaming at Dad for the first time in his life. 

He was there when Sam’s eyes first opened, he was there when Sam got that nick on his palm that makes his touch rough, can see the shadow of the little line on his forearm where they test for shifters.

He knows what Sam’s blood tastes like, what his vomit smells like, how long it takes for him to fall asleep.

He knows the outline of Sam’s cock in his jeans, knows that when Sam gets turned on he can’t stop shifting in his chair, knows that Sam loves the slow chase—eyeing some girl back and forth across a bar for an hour before he actually goes up and talks to her.

It’s almost like having sex with himself, he knows this body so well. 

It should be disconcerting, it should remind Dean that this is Bad Danger Sam Bad Stop, but Dean rubs a thumbnail over the divot underneath his lowermost rib, knows what it feels like when his diaphragm pushes it out and in, and understands that this body was created for him.

It’s not the one that he was put in, but knows down to his bones, further, that this body was made to be the box that holds his favorite person, knows that this body could have looked like anything and Dean would have obsessed over every inch.  

This body—this man—is everything that Dean wants to be, everything that he’s not; it’s just him, his complement, split into two skins and two bodies and it’s Sam’s heart in his chest, it was never his, never could be. 

Dean doesn’t feel sane, he’s so full of it, so full of Sam. 

Dean wonders if it’s even possible if Sam feels the same way, if Sam feels as high as he does now that he has so much skin he’s allowed to touch. 

He wants to rip the bandage from his hand and let both of his hands rove over the planes of Sam’s skin, damn the consequences. Let him cover Sam in his blood—he already is. He wants Sam’s blood in his veins, in his mouth, wants to look down at Sam streaked with Dean and know: He’s mine here, too. Not just in Heaven, not just where no one can see, not just where he thinks of Flagstaff and California. He’s mine here.

But when Dean opens his bad hand against Sam’s thigh, tries to stretch his fingers open, an open sharp throb hits up his arm and Dean flinches.

Sam notices, of course he does, and he moves Dean’s hand off of his body.

Dean feels chastised, almost, like a child. 

He feels a frisson of impotent anger low in his gut that is quickly extinguished by Sam’s mouth on his again. 

Dean opens to Sam’s mouth, lets Sam slide his tongue against his and wetness slides against his tongue, more than usual. It takes Dean’s brain (now just fuzz and a quiet course of moremoremore) a second to understand what it is: Sam has gathered his saliva and is feeding it to Dean with his tongue.

He’s essentially spitting into his mouth.

Dean furrows his brows, feel Sam’s spit slide down his tongue, unsure what to do. And then, because this is Sam, and he is Dean, he swallows.

Dean swallows fast, swallows deep, closes his eyes tight because he doesn’t want to know what Sam’s face looks like when he pulls away. Sam licks Dean’s bottom lip, and it feels like praise. Dean throbs.

“Jesus,” Sam says, voice hoarse and deep and lips pressing at the hinge of Dean’s jaw. “You’re  being so good for me.” 

Oh my god, he thinks, vaguely sick and absolutely so horny he feels like he’s going to explode. Something replaced Sam with a sex god, and they kept Sam’s weird floppy hair. 

Dean remembers what that siren felt like, knows it feels to have his mind throbbing and his dick harder than it’s ever been and his vision spinning because he’s so sick with want. That’s what this feels like, all heat and aching and Sam’s sweat on his skin. 

Dean has given Sam too much power, has always given Sam too much power, so Dean decides with shaking hands that he needs to take some back. Dean reaches forward, wedges his good hand between their body and takes Sam in his hand.

Dean’s hand wraps around Sam’s cock and he’s going to vomit because Sammy is fifteen and Dean promised himself that he would never touch, not ever, never in a million years, Sam wasn’t supposed to know about this.

But then Sam’s mouth bites down on his collarbone, tongue laving at the ridge of bone and Sam is twenty-seven, dick leaking in his hand and stubble-rough face burning Dean’s skin like being too close to fire.

Sam opens his mouth around a gasp, lets his tongue lay flat against Dean’s skin as Dean starts moving, rubbing a thumb over his slit, feeling the wetness of his precome against the pad of his fingers. It’s awkward, a little, as Dean never touches himself with his left hand. It’s like trying to write with the wrong hand, it takes a second for Dean to manually work through where his fingers are supposed to go but then he does and Sam makes a noise against Dean’s skin and Dean can feel the vibrations of it. He’s white-hot in Dean’s hand, and Dean can feel his heartbeat when he lightly places his thumb along the vein running underneath it.

Dean’s brain goes quiet, silent, like it only does at the bottom of a bottle or mid-hunt, but it’s different. Holy, almost. Like the quiet that swallows everything when you step into a sanctuary. How could anything that’s bad feel like this?

Having Sam, like this, feels like vindication. I knew it would be like this. I knew we were built for this.

Sam gasps a little, when Dean twists his hand on the upstroke, and Dean can’t take it anymore.  He lets go of Sam, hand cramping, and Sam makes a noise of loss—a groan and whine blended together.

“Want to feel you,” Dean says, and tries to take off his pants with one hand. He manages to undo his button but stalls when he gets to his zipper. Sam takes the zipper the rest of the way down and his fingertips brush against Dean’s outline in his boxers.

“Take it off, I’ll get the lube.” Sam says, voice still low and hoarse. Dean’s brain goes sideways again, and he’s pretty sure he’ll never have another coherent thought again. Sam slides off of his body, and Dean has to close his eyes and take breath before he makes any move at all.

How did today end up here? Dean, if he pries, knows that he will still find anger and hurt and anxiety hiding beneath his lungs, so he doesn’t pry.

He takes off his pants.

It takes a lot more maneuvering than it would any other day, and Dean is glad Sam is still tilted away from him because this is decidedly unsexy.

When Sam comes back, Dean’s got his pants and boxers off and he mourns the fact that he didn’t have time to ogle Sam bent over. 

Sam’s got a bottle of lube and the packet of a condom his hand. Dean wonders who else got to see him like this, confident and smiling and ready to fuck them into next week. It makes Dean’s chest burn a little bit, which is hilarious, because Dean hasn’t exactly been conservative with his own sexuality. Dean’s mouth waters as Sam gets closer, and Dean can’t believe that he gets to see this. Sam. This is Sam.

The bed is so low that Dean is level with Sam’s cock if he bends forward a little. Dean looks up at Sam, reaches out with a hand so he can stop his progress forward. Sam stops, and Dean can see the little hitch in his chest. He’s still got the lube bottle in his hand but drops it onto the bed next to Dean so he can clench at Dean’s shoulder.

Dean wonders, distantly, if Sam remembers the year that Dean almost lost his arm to a ghoul in Kentucky. It had been bad, Dean thinks, but he was unconscious for most of it. It had left a nasty scar at the roundness of his shoulder, and Dad left him home on the next few hunts while he learned how to use it again. He had been thirteen.

Sam rubs a thumb over the place where that scar used to be before Cas wiped them all off post-Hell, and Dean doesn’t have to wonder, anymore. It’s been so easy to forget that Sam knows his body, too. That Sam has spent years constructing Dean back into his usual shape after hunts, spent hours building him back stitch by stitch.

Sam mouths Dean’s name, and Dean can’t stand it anymore. He needs Sam however he can get him, wants to take this from Sam for himself. He leans forward.

Dean doesn’t remember when Sam learned what he could do to himself, but remembers almost walking in on him more than once. He would come home and Sam would be flushed, startled, cheeks pink and sweat barely shining at his hairline.

The air would be thick, tense, and Sam would be breathing like he had been running. Dean knew it was his sacred duty to mock him relentlessly anytime it happened, but he always did it with a weird tension in his chest.

There would be this smell, on his hands in his hair on the sheets—sweat and salt and Sam, close and real and alive. 

And as Dean noses down, presses his tongue against the tendon where his thigh meets his crotch, there it is. Dean’s eyes water, his throat closes, and for one horrific second he thinks he might cry.

It’s like getting shot—not with a pistol, but with a proper shotgun, all power and shrapnel in your chest and collateral damage.

“Wait,” Sam says, and Dean’s throat closes. He practically flies back, head snapping up to look up at him. It’s over, Sam doesn’t—

But Sam presses a hand to Dean’s chest, and Dean lets himself fall back on the bed.

“I want—“ Sam says, and stops. He looks uncertain, which is discordant to his steaming skin and erection in Dean’s face. Dean would smile, but can’t. “I want to do this for you, tonight.”

Dean wants to protest. He’s been dreaming about having Sam’s cock in his mouth for a truly illegal amount of time. He wants to show Sam that Dean’s in this, that he can take care of him.

However, something in Sam’s eyes makes him stop.

He’s serious. He’s unsure about asking, but he wants this, if the flush high in his cheeks and the intensity in his gaze is anything to go by.

“Yeah,” Dean croaks. “Okay.”

Sam puts a knee up on the bed, and lets Dean maneuver himself back against the head of the bed before descending.

Sam starts by kissing him, and Dean falls back into him immediately. He’s taken to Sam like Baby to the road. Dean lets himself wander this time, lets his mouth trail down Sam’s neck, laving against the shifting tendons and muscles there.

Sam’s hand wraps around his cock, and fire shoots through Dean’s bones. He bites down, hard, on the juncture of Sam’s neck, and Sam gasps into Dean’s ear. Pleasure, white-hot and SamSamSam, builds through Dean’s body, as Sam starts to jack him slowly. 

Dean shifts his mouth and bites down again, just to feel the give of Sam’s skin, the body that he knows so well. Sam is panting open-mouthed, and Dean can feel the moisture of his breath billowing over his bare shoulders.

Sam’s other hand grasps for something on the bed, and Dean realizes that it’s the lube. Dean whimpers. Fuck.

He looks down at Sam’s giant cock and worries briefly how the hell it’s going to fit inside of him. Dean doesn't know if Sam's changed his mind, if he's decided that letting Dean fuck him is too vulnerable, but Dean will take Sam here. He'll rip himself open at the seams if Sam asks. Sam lets go of him so he can pour some of the lube over his fingers. Dean watches him sit up, and Sam moves down Dean’s body so he’s sitting with his head at Dean’s waist. Dean bites down on his lip, hard, trying to calm down.

It’s just Sam, Sam will take care of him. It’s okay. It’s okay.

Dean closes his eyes as Sam wraps a hand around his dick, a touch of lube making his hand slide wetperfect. It’s okay, it’s Sam.

Dean wants this, he does, but the suddenness of it is going to take his breath away.

“Dean, look at me,” Sam rasps, and Dean opens his eyes obediently. Sam is looking up at him, mouth inches away from his dick, flushed and leaking and harder than Dean’s been in a while. Dean bites down on a groan, Fuck. Fuck—Sam is—

“Want you,” Sam pants, and he looks like he’s in pain, brow furrowing, as he takes Dean in his mouth.

Dean does groan aloud then, a fluttering moan that rocks him to his core as he’s swallowed by wet hot slick Sam perfect—

Sam isn’t practiced at this, and it’s not the most talented blow-job he’s ever gotten, but Dean feels like he’s going to come down Sam’s throat any second, because it’s Sam. He works Dean into his mouth and Dean’s vision explodes into stars when he touches the soft palate at the top of Sam’s mouth.

Sam’s jaw opens wider and Dean can feel the tickle of his hair against his thighs. Sam is careful of his teeth, and is going down on Dean like he’s dreamed about this, like having Dean is a privilege and not something that anyone with a quick smirk in a bar can get with a shot of whiskey.

His tongue is everywhere at once, and the gentle suction on the head is melting Dean’s skin from his bones. Dean hears the slick noise of Sam on his cock, hears the wet noise of Sam’s fingers parting.

Dean waits for a breach of fingers that never comes.

Dean looks back down and sees—

Sam has a hand pressed behind him, and Dean’s brain won’t process this for a second before—oh—

Sam is prepping himself. Sam is fucking himself down on his own fingers, rocking forward onto Dean’s cock and back to his own fingers splitting him open and Dean is gone.

He digs his good hand into Sam’s hair, and makes a noise like’s being killed. Sam moans back, and Dean can feel the vibrations through every pore in his body.

Sam is opening himself to get fucked. Sam wants to get fucked by Dean. Sam is going to let Dean—Sam wants Dean to—

Sam’s hand is moving behind him, and Dean has to close his eyes because this—Sam propped on his knees, head in Dean’s lap and his fingers slide wet and messy in and out of his ass—is too much.

Dean can’t see Sam’s fingers but he can hear them, making wet sucking sounds as his presses his fingers against his insides. It’s obscene, it’s fucking obscene, and Dean’s going—Dean is—

Sam can’t take him all the way back, but he’s making little noises like he loves it, dazed and quiet. All at once, he seems to hit that spot inside himself, for his spine pulls taut, and Sam’s mouth opens around him. He moans, tongue touching the bottom of his cock and sending vibrations, molten hot, straight up Dean’s spine, sparking across every nerve.

Dean gasps, tightening his hand in Sam’s hair, although unsure whether he wants to pull him closer or away.

Sam lets Dean fall out of his mouth and presses his forehead to Dean’s hipbone as he finds that spot again and again, gasping quietly and lazily mouthing at Dean’s skin. Dean uses his hand in Sam’s hair to tilt his head back. Sam blinks up at him, eyes half lidded and wet, abused mouth a little slack.

“Greedy.” Dean rasps, and Sam inhales raggedly like Dean has surprised him.

Sam’s fingers slip from his body with a wet noise that Dean feels in his own cock and he straightens, sliding up Dean’s body until he can slam their mouths together in a kiss.

Dean can taste the salt of his precome on Sam’s tongue and an electric shock shoots down his spine. Sam’s legs slide up after him, and this man is too damn long, Dean wants to hold him down, he wants to—

Sam fumbles for something on the bed without breaking their kiss, and Dean realizes it’s the condom from earlier. A part of him—clawing and hissing and panicked—wants to ask Sam not to use it. He wants to feel Sam’s body, know that he has been as far inside as another human can get. But this is Sam’s decision, he can’t trust Dean as far as he can throw him, and okay, Dean gets it, he really does. Maybe Dean can ask him not to use one when they get around to getting Sam’s monster cock inside him, instead. 

Sam’s mouth is pulled from his as he straightens and there it is—Dean’s going to explode, his spine is melting into the bed, he’s—

Sam hovers over his lap, cock jutting out, staring down at Dean over his heaving chest, and Dean has never seen anything as beautiful, anything as right. He reaches out with a hand to pet down Sam’s twitching muscle in his thigh. Sam rolls the condom down on him, and the brush of his fingers is straight electricity in Dean’s veins.

“Sam.” Dean says, helpless to anything else, anything ever again.

Sam smiles. And he grabs the base of Dean’s dick and sinks down. 

The world ends.

It has to.

The world must have definitely ended, Dean has to be being ridden around by Michael right now because he has never experienced anything like this.

It’s…

It’s—

Sam is perfect, he’s hot and slick and fits Dean like a glove, like he was made to take this. His knobby knee is digging into Dean’s side uncomfortably, Dean can hear the punched out sound he makes, he’s not even all the way in yet, and Dean’s head is going to pop off.

He’s had sex.

This isn’t sex.

It’s—

Sam stops when he’s most of the way there, and Dean feels his thighs shaking. He’s hovering, and his hands slam down on Dean’s chest. 

Sam’s eyes are so dark that Dean can’t see any of his iris anymore, just pupil. His mouth is open, and Dean can see his tongue flex, like he wants something in his mouth. Dean has to close his eyes, press his head back into the pillow, because Sam is going to melt his brain, has melted his skin straight off.

Sam’s hands are scorching against his skin, so goddamn big, and then—

His hips meet Dean’s. Sam makes a breathless little noise that Dean can feel in his bones. He’s on fire, he can feel sparks in his toes, he can’t see anything, can’t feel anything but SamSamSam down to his marrow, deeper, stretched through him like blood.

Inside he’s slickwethot, tight and perfect and Dean opens his eyes slow and syrupy, and Sam is staring at him, chest heaving. Dean wants to devour him, Dean wants to stay here forever, inside of Sam, unmovable, part of him.

Dean doesn’t think he can move, even when Sam’s fingers tilt and his nails dig into Dean’s chest, eyes wide and pleading.

“Move.” Sam says, and Dean can do anything Sam wants, will do anything Sam asks, even as his spine is a pool of melted wax.

Dean grinds up, slow and heavy into him, and Sam’s head falls forward.

“Fuck.” He rasps. “Fuck, Dean.”

“Yeah, that’s the idea.” Dean says, automatic, and Sam’s head snaps up, disbelieving. He barks a laugh, brow furrowing. His eyes are watering, and he’s smiling, and Dean has never wanted anyone more.

Laughter in bed is usually a one-way ticket out of his motel room, but Dean wants to hear Sam’s laugh in his own chest, he wants to pin this man down and work laughter out of him until he cries. He wants his pain and joy and laughter and tears and he wants to fuse their bodies together until one of them can breathe and the other will get the oxygen.

Dean plants his feet into the mattress, and it takes more than one try because his legs are bags of jello, wobbly and useless. When he fucks up into Sam next, Sam shifts his hips, and Dean bites down on a humiliating whimper.

He’s acting like a blushing virgin, which is damn humiliating, but he’s trying to summon any of his usual bravado and can’t.

Sam is in his lap, rising from his lap on shaky knees so that he can meet Dean’s next thrust. He circles his hips, grinding into Dean’s lap, fucking himself on Dean’s cock like Dean’s a goddamn dildo or something, like he’s not even there at all, and Dean tilts his head back on a moan.

Sam is punching little groans out of himself as he tilts himself forward on Dean’s cock, sliding it in and out of himself in slow, heady drags. He’s glistening with sweat, almost glowing, and Dean wants to lick it off of him, tug a nipple into his mouth, taste sweat and salt on his tongue, in the back of his throat, taste Sam everywhere, taste him for days.

“God,” Dean says, “You’re perfect, you’re goddamn perfect.”

Sam whimpers—fucking whimpers—hair falling down into his face. He tilts his head back, shaking it out of his eyes, and Dean traces the column of his throat greedily as Sam swallows. He’s ethereal—angelic, if Dean didn’t know any better—head tilted up in supplication, like he’s praying.

Sam finds his prostate, Dean can see it happen, Sam goes still and then speeds up, spine straightening like someone is grabbing him and pulling him up.

He’s listing to the side, and Dean raises his good hand and grabs Sam’s wrist with it. Sam seems to snap back to himself, as Dean starts fucking him in earnest.

They make slapping noises as they come together, and Dean’s familiar with this, the cadence of sex.

Dean’s had sex, Dean loves sex, and Dean knows that logically that’s what this is, but Sam is in his lap, Sam is slick and moves like he was made to take Dean’s cock. How can this be anything like the sex he’s had before? That was listening to a single violin, this is a symphony and crashing cymbals and building crescendoes and Sam’s breath and flutes layering in over each other and Dean’s heartbeat pounding in his ears. 

Dean feels wrong-footed, so damn clumsy and large and lolling, but he can’t stop fucking up into Sam even if the room was on fire. Sam is starting to move faster, and Dean moves his hand to Sam’s hips. His other hand pinches and pulls, prickling with sweat wrapped in its bandage. He can feel Sam’s muscles pull together on that goddamn ridiculous body, and Dean kind of hates everyone who has ever looked at Sam before ever.

He always wants to give the person who taught Sam how to ride cock like this a bouquet of roses. After he disembowels them. Because Dean was born to be right here, feeding his dick into Sam inch by inch while Sam takes his pleasure. Sam was built for Dean, but Dean is inextricably Sam’s. His hands were formed to fit perfect against Sam’s waist, built just strong enough to hold him up and hold weapons to keep monsters away. His shoulders were meant for Sam, his eyes and teeth and tongue. Dean cries out, and Sam can’t stop saying his name a trailing DeanDeanDean.

Dean nails Sam’s prostate dead-on, and Sam full-on wails. Someone slams a hand into the motel wall behind Dean’s head, and Dean can’t help but groan at that, that someone knows that Dean is doing this to Sam. Sam’s hand slide down to Dean’s waist, to the sensitive skin of his side, and Dean wants him to dig in, to pull him apart, but Sam’s hands are frighteningly gentle.

“Dean,” Sam says, and it sounds like it always does, like when they’re in the middle of a hunt and there’s blood everywhere and something is coming to kill Dean. The only thing that could kill Dean right now is Sam, and Dean’s pretty sure he already has. He’s sure that this is the end, that Dean’s dead and the last twenty-four hours have been a hallucination.

People shouldn’t be allowed to feel this, people shouldn’t—

Dean reaches out and takes Sam’s cock in his hand, mourns the fact that he can’t guide Sam’s waist and touch him at the same time. Sam keens, and his hand slams back down on Dean’s chest.

“Dean, yes.” Sam’s hips hitch in their insane rhythm, and Dean is going to cry. Or scream. “Dean, fuck. Please.”

Dean works Sam’s cock in his fist as he slams up into his body. Sam is shaking, trembling like a goddamn leaf, but he is working Dean for everything he’s got, and Dean’s going to—

Sam is—

With a cry, Sam comes. He goes incredibly still, thighs shaking against Dean’s side, and spine snapping straight. His head gets thrown back, and Sam is a goddamn vision, cock spilling in Dean’s hand. Come splatters Dean’s chest and it feels like ownership, and that’s what pushes Dean over the edge.

It hits him like a goddamn car.

White explodes behind his eyelids and he must’ve closed his eyes, but his world is bright and sharp and his legs are shaking and ecstasy explodes across every pore, through every synapse in his brain, exploding like firecrackers—Sam—Sam—

Seconds pass. Months pass. Time slows to a crawl, syrupy and slow and warm. The next thing Dean can coherently discern is Sam’s face above his.

Sam is tracing the line of Dean’s mouth with a hand, and he looks dangerously sappy.

“Dean,” Sam says, voice dry and aching like when he wakes up in the morning.

“Sam,” Dean acknowledges, heart in his throat. “Sammy.” He corrects, when Sam looks at him strangely, but that can’t be what he’s looking for, because Sam’s mouth tilts down in a frown. Dean raises his one hand, head still full of cotton, and presses it to Sam’s waist.

He helps Sam lift himself off of Dean—a groaning, fluttery whimper that makes Dean’s dick twitch valiantly in an effort to get hard again—and Dean shifts off the bed to get rid of the condom.

When his feet hit the floor he almost falls straight to the floor, and the room spins. Dean stands laboriously, leaving sweat-warm sheets on his way to the bathroom. He ties the condom, throwing it into the trash when he rounds the corner, and grabs a washcloth off the rack. He has to place the washcloth in the sink and then turn the faucet on before he can pick it up again, after a few seconds of trying to maneuver doing both with his gimp hand.

Sam’s come cools on his chest in the chill of the bathroom, and Dean hesitates on raising the washcloth to wipe it off. It should be gross—it’s spunk drying on his chest for fuck’s sake. Dean does it quickly, taking a deep breath like he’s diving underwater even though he can’t explain it to himself and tries not to think about it.

When he’s clean, he looks up at himself in the mirror. He’s moving in the dark, but he can still see the marks on his neck already darkening into bruises. His lips are essentially mauled, kiss-swollen and flush and a bead of blood dribbling up, but Dean doesn’t remember splitting it.

He’s got Sam’s fingernail marks on his chest, four perfect crescents under his pecs. His eyes are dark, and Dean feels monstrous in the low light—eldritch and unfamiliar.

He turns and walks out quickly.

He takes the washcloth with him, but freezes when he registers Sam on the bed.

Sam is propped up on one arm, looking up at Dean coming out of the bathroom.

He’s got bite marks on his shoulder, purpling and bruising. He’s got scratches on his left side, red and angry. His hair is a disaster, and he’s biting at an already swollen bottom lip. He’s got a bruise on his jaw, blood still smeared orange and dried from Dean’s fist, fully purple and leeching to the space just above it.

He looks like he lost a fight with a bear. Dean’s stomach drops.

“Jesus,” Sam says, but there’s a smile on his face. “I did a number on you.”

Dean can’t smile back. He takes the washcloth over to Sam, and kneels back on the bed even though it feels like he shouldn’t be allowed to. He presses the washcloth to Sam’s jaw first, just to get Dean’s blood off. He moves it over Sam’s neck, and Sam hisses as Dean touches the sensitive skin of his mauled neck.

“I’ve got it,” Sam says, taking the washcloth from Dean’s numb fingers.

“Yeah,” Dean swallows. He rises from the bed quickly again, and goes to the other bed to grab his duffle. He snags a pair of boxers, and doesn’t realize until too late that they’re a pair of Sam’s. The elastic is just a bit too large, and it sags on Dean’s hips.

Dean turns back around, only to find Sam watching him with wary eyes. Dean knows that Sam knows what this is, and hates him a little for it.

Pretense with Sam is useless, and Dean wishes that it wasn’t—that he could hide some of his unease and heartache and desperate, frantic longing.

“C’mon,” Sam says, not calling Dean out on the barrier that he’s put between them, so Dean doesn’t have to feel his skin when Sam slides up against him back in bed.

Dean turns out the lamp, letting Sam press their calves together. Sam doesn’t do much else, doesn’t pull Dean close. Dean wishes he would. Dean is glad he doesn’t.

This should’ve changed something, right? Dean can still feel Sam’s body underneath his hands. He wants to throw an arm over Sam and pull him to his chest. He wants to bury his nose in his ridiculous hair and fall asleep like that. But Sam is hesitant with him, and Dean will always take his cues from Sam.

If Sam doesn’t touch him first, Dean won’t reach out.

I hurt you, Dean almost says, but can’t quite voice it. Even his love is violent. Dean can’t see much in the dark, but hears Sam inhale, as if to speak.

“I thought—” Sam says finally, whispering it into the dark. Dean can hear him swallow. “Do you remember when we were in Cincinnati? I was probably like thirteen?”

Dean hums in the affirmative, but doesn’t say anything else. He feels each second by like a countdown. Something’s coming, and Dean wants to close his eyes and brace for it.

“Dad was gone for a few months and it was just us.” Sam says after a beat. “There was that zoo downtown, and you took off work one day and we went?

“I said I was too old for it, but you were so damn insistent. We got there at like ten, and we stayed the whole day.”

“You loved that bird house.” Dean blurts, seeing a grinning Sam in his minds eye staring up at him because he was still shorter back then. Sam looked like an actual kid, shining eyes and snarky mouth and unlined face as he looked up at some red-tailed something or the other. A hunt had gone sour the last time they were out at Bobby’s, and it left Dean with a limp that hadn’t gone away yet. Sam was all taciturn and grumbly and irritating, and Dad left because he couldn’t deal with a Sam that wouldn’t look him in the eye. Dean tried unsuccessfully to draw Sam out with a snuck beer and trips to the drive-in and a new pair of jeans but Sam still could barely speak to him.

Sam hated the summers, because school was out and all he had was Dean. Sam hated that. The wind goes out of Dean’s sails. Yeah, how could he forget?

“We bought those pudding pies at the concession stand—those were rank.” Dean can hear the curl of his mouth in his voice.

“Those were full of chocolate-y goodness,” Dean says half-heartedly, still feeling unbearably sad. “You’ve always been a health-freak.”

Sam scoffs. A moment passes.

“That’s the most understood I think I’ve ever felt. That day.” Sam says, finally. “You could tell I was climbing the walls and we spent hours just walking. No Dad, no hunting, just…I don’t know. Us. I said all the fucked-up animals looked like you and you kept trying to hit me with your water bottle, and…”

Sam trails off, and he has Dean’s heart between his teeth. Dean’s chest hitches and he realizes that he had forgotten to breathe for the last little bit. Dean remembers that, of course he does. He had hoarded that close to his chest over the years, a day of just Sammy, getting a regular day. Dean had worked overtime for weeks to squirrel enough money away to go. He had begged and flirted and pleaded with his manager down at the garage to let him off for the day.

“When I went off to Stanford, I dreamt of the Cincinnati Zoo, sometimes.” 

Dean doesn’t know what to say to that. He can feel his heartbeat in his shredded knuckles, down to his toes.

“I thought Heaven would be the front seat of the Impala. Or that bench in front of the lion enclosure, when you let me lean into your arm.”

“Why wasn’t it?” Dean says, slowly. He can hear the lump in his own throat and knows that Sam can, too.

“I don’t know.” Sam says, eventually, after he lets Dean’s heart try to tear its way through his chest. “I think…I think when I realized that I wanted you it all got twisted up. Tangled, I guess. With…with guilt, and longing, and anger. Thanksgiving was uncomplicated. It was belonging with something that didn’t matter. I wanted it for so long that it was easy to want.”

Sam inhales deeply, like he’s bracing for something, and then he says,

“You were never easy to want.” 

Dean closes his eyes, tightly. It’s not much different than lying there in the dark, but he needs the separation. Sam had reached into his own head and pulled shit out that he didn’t want to see again.

It hurts to know that he had haunted Sam like this, that even when Sam wanted normal and happy Dean had made him confused and angry and hurt.

Guilt and joy and anger still war in his chest. Guilt: Sam had been hurting over this for years. Joy: Sam wants him Samwantshim Samwantshimsamwantshim. Anger: 

“Flagstaff.” Dean says, finally. Just Flagstaff. Sam is silent for so long that Dean—if he didn’t know better, if he couldn’t feel Sam’s tension—would’ve thought he had fallen asleep. “Was I that bad, Sammy? You weren’t running from Dad, that time, you were running from me.”

“Stop.” Sam says, and Dean feels the bed shift suddenly as Sam props himself up so he can look at Dean’s face. Dean wishes he would turn back around—he feels too exposed like this, even though he can barely trace Sam’s face in the dark.

“God, I felt like I was going crazy.” Sam spits, like he had been ready for it. “I was so fucked up and twisted and—and I wanted my big brother to pin me to a goddamn mattress. You were dating Cindy Baker that year, do you remember? I could smell her on you, every time you came home. Even when you’d fall asleep, you’d be sticky with her shitty ass rose perfume.”

Sam’s talking fast, like it’s exploding from him, like he’ll never be able to stop.

“I wanted to kill her, I wanted to kill you. There was nothing else in my life, just you, and every person in that town that you’d fuck instead of me.” 

“Sam—“ Dean says, rocked to his core because he remembers suddenly that Sam hated Cindy. He thought it had been because she called him Sal no matter how many times Dean had corrected her. There was weird tension between them the few times that Sam had run inevitably into her, and Dean—Did she know? Did that random girl in Flagstaff know?

“Before spring break, some girl in my geometry asked if you were my boyfriend.” Sam continues, and Dean’s thoughts are still reeling. “You had dropped me off before school and she thought you were cute, or something. I said yeah, because who fucking cared? I was working myself sick over you, and I just…”

Sam’s jaw works, and Dean watches as he winces slightly, his face still bruised and no doubt aching from Dean’s hit earlier.

“You picked me up one day and introduced yourself as my brother and she was there and God—the look that she gave me, the look on her face. She knew, and—I couldn’t stay in that town another goddamn minute.” 

Dean exhales, hard, in the silence that Sam leaves in his wake. 

He tries to imagine that, but can’t.

Sam being so sick and miserable that he took a touch of agency over his own life again just to have it blown up in his face. Dean tries to remember the girl that he’s talking about, if anyone stands out, but it’s all a blur. Flagstaff stands out strong and angry in his memory, and everything before and after was blurry and indistinct. 

Sam wants him.

Sam worked himself sick over it, thought that Dean had seen what Sam’s desire was in Heaven and was disgusted. He had been ready to leave over it again, was willing to take Dean’s hatred and blows and wanted Dean.

Sam’s relighting of Flagstaff makes Dean’s skin crawl. It was freedom for Sam, but it was still, when boiled down to its foundations, freedom from Dean. From what Dean made Sam feel, buried in the pit of his stomach, unwell and ailing.

And…it’s not enough. Dean will remember that bone-deep, aching, sharp panic for the rest of his life. Two weeks of a living nightmare, of not eating and barely sleeping and being sick day in and out over a Sammy that was dying anonymous somewhere far away. Sam shouldn’t’ve left him like that. If he needed to leave, fine, but he shouldn’t’ve done it like that.

But for now, Dean will let it rest.

“Okay, Sammy.” Dean says, and lets Sam fall back against the bed. Sam lays as stiff as a board until Dean manages to work an arm under his head. Sam lolls against him, letting his tension out of his body like a deflating tire.

“I know you don’t do chick-flick moments,” Sam adds quietly in the silence of the room. “But I died this morning. And I lost you twice. So. You should know that I—Well. You should know.”

“Yeah,” Dean says. I love you. I love you. Dean wants to eat the words out of Sam’s mouth. His throat is tight, and his eyes burn behind closed eyelids. He can’t say it. He won’t. Not yet. Not now.

They never need words, anyhow.

Sam sighs, but it doesn’t sound disappointed. He just tilts his head to the side so Dean can feel his breath on his neck. A hand curls into the waistband of Dean’s boxers at his hip like Sam used to do when he was small, and it makes a shiver run up Dean’s spine, good and bad and warm and perfect. 

Dean turns his head and presses his nose, after fifteen strenuous goddamn years, into Sam’s ridiculous hair. He smells like their shampoo and soap and sweat. He smells like Dean. He smells like the road and home and life. He smells like Heaven, really.

“G’night, Sammy.” Dean says, and lets the sound of Sam’s quiet breathing take him away.