ONE SOUL SPLIT BETWEEN TWO BODIES

There is a loose wire, somewhere beneath all that metal that hides his heart, and it rattles with an emotion he refuses to accept. (He remembers a time when someone, anyone would balk at him throwing himself at death. Not these days.)

“Multitask, Wesson. That’s why I hired you.” 

“I already multitask.”

He’s maybe a little less gentle than he could be when he grasps Tony’s chin, turns his face toward the still-dim light overhead, energy-efficient bulb still gearing itself up to full brightness. It’s honestly an accident. He’s tired enough that his coordination might be suffering, a little.

“…I may have just come out of retirement.” And the suit is on Sam’s balcony, but he’s not going to mention that yet, he’s going to wait and see how bad the freak out is.

“Don’t let the media blow it out of proportion.”

  “ --- ”

It’s a resigned sort of noise, one part frustration and one part stoicism, because there’s no point in arguing, Easiest just to accept it.

His laughter is a breath quiet thing, tucked into the crown of Sam’s hair. For all that his little brother was bigger than him, Sam still folded against him like they were younger, back when Dean was the big bad shield between Sam and the rest of the world. 

It’s nice to still feel that way, after everything shifted beneath them. 

To feel like Sam still needs him. 

“We’ll figure it out. Like we always do.”

“You think mom will look after the dog?”

Because he loves that thing, the scrappy little rescue that still hasn’t quite figured out how to dog, curls up on him like a cat and hates baths and likes to hide behind the couch, but he wants Dean. Just Dean, just himself, just some open highway.

     (The more he thinks about it, that’s what sounds better than some beach villa       somewhere. The two of them and a car, Dean’s car. He remembers a tipsy       conversation about sex in the backseat, and suddenly it seems very important,       testing the logistics of it.)

“Sure.”

His heart clenches hard, stutter stops through the proximity and then plummets when Sam closes his eyes. Every time he thinks it’s gotten as bad as it’s going to get, it gets worse. 

God, he hates himself for making that fucking Tinder. 

Dean takes a step back, careful to walk over Sam’s little rescue dog, until he can make for the couch. The best thing he can do right now is put any space between them that he can. 

“Get some sleep. I’ll make you some breakfast later.”

He can do this. He can be a good big brother, and take care of Sam like he’s supposed to. Then he can go home, get shitfaced and put his fist through something like a man’s supposed to do with a broken heart. 

“No, Dean --”

Protest rises before Dean can make it out of hearing entirely -- install himself on the couch, too far away to do Sam any good whatsoever. Too far to let him do anything other than lie there and think about the things he’d said, the things he’d done -- the lies he’d told Dean only to tell him the truths, too, unwittingly and unknowingly.

“Like usual.”

‘Usual’ is probably a misnomer. It’s not usual, he’s pretty sure, for two grown brothers to weather particularly bad hangovers by curling up together under the covers, like they did when they were kids, just because the lights were all off and mom and dad were asleep and it felt a little like an adventure.

But it helps, it does, and Sam always misses it when one or the other of them has been sharing a bed with someone else, when relationship gets in the way of it. 

His eyes are open now, focused on his brother.

@duocorpora

“I promise no one paid for me this time. And it’s not stalking, because your brother let me in.”

  “ ---- of course he did.”

It’s spoken with a complete lack of surprise, but a degree of warmth, too. He watches Dean’s hands for a moment, pressing idly at piano keys, before he moves to perch right on the edge of the stool, next to him. Careful eyes watch soft fingers without directly looking, and under his own, deeper, rumbling notes complement, only a moment behind.

When the trumpetssounded, the army shouted, and at the sound of trumpet, when the men gave aloud shout, the wall collapsed.

        Joshua 6:20

Lucifer is in his mind.

No, deeper than that: Lucifer is in his blood, his bones.Lucifer is in every nerve ending, every cell. Lucifer is become him. The wallheld and held and held until it didn’t, and now it crumbles like the walls ofJericho at Joshua’s shout.

But it’s not an army that marches over the rubble. It’s thedevil.

And did he ever escape the cage, or is he still there,burning? Is this the greatest trick the devil ever pulled, convincing Sam hehad escaped before he shattered the illusion — a taste of what he can neverhave before a taste eternity?

He doesn’t sleep, he can’t eat. Muscles waste and sanity isslipping. He’s this Gordian knot, tangled mess of time until there’s a linecrossed, no going back: goodbye Sam Winchester. And through it all, as thatwall comes down, the memories of himself, sans soul.

That wasn’t the devil.

It wasn’t Lucifer who killed in cold blood, who lied andmanipulated and was prepared to give up his family for the sake of a hunt. Itwasn’t Lucifer that made a deal with wolf, traded loyalty for life and theguarantee of a coat at the end of it. That was all him, that’s the monster thatlurks beneath his skin, caged only with the fragile fetters of shattered soul.

(Will he be able to keep that monster caged, now, withburned-edge fragments rattling around in him, a mosaic of pieces slotted backtogether with no real finesse? The question would keep him awake at night, ifLucifer and the nightmares hadn’t already beaten it to the mark.)

And then – and then –

      ‘This is real.’

Sulu speaks with such authority, but how can he know? Howcan he know what is real and what is not? Even as thumb brushes hot againstcurling mark of deal made, Sam is doubting. Sam is pulling air into his lungsand wondering if he’s really sucking in the scent of hellfire, of burningflesh, of his own demise.

     ‘Breathe.’

Does wolf not understand what man can?

From behind him, familiar face laughs familiar laugh, asound that locks muscles up against spine and leaves Sam hunched and fearful.Cowering.

‘Does he really think that can convince you? A mark? Oh,Sam. Sammy. Tell him he’s got to try harder than that.’

Sam squeezes eyes shut, and then they open again, cloudedwith something like fading panic. Eyes fix against the form of Lucifer, the loweasy smile and the wicked glow in his eyes, and realisation oozes into Sam’smind like sweet honey.

Nobody else can see the mark.

Not men, not wolves, not angels – not even archangels, noteven the fallen. Only he and Sulu know it, only they can see the brand of debtbetween them, a promise rendered in something more than just words or blood.

‘You’re my own mind,’ he says, thick and low and slow, andSulu hushes him. Is ignored. Sam’s hand covers Sulu’s, presses hard into fleshof forearm, too hard, until there’s a bite of pain to the pressure, Sulu’s warmthumb under his own, cold and clammy and shaking.

Lucifer flickers, and Sam clings on, anchors himself againsthot skin and elegant hands, against a loyalty undeserved where it was wrestedfrom within traps of rowan and silver and magic, painted against skin that hadno intention to do anything but exploit.

Eyes focus on wolf’s own, dark, focused.

‘This is real,’ Sam repeats, weakly, and the smile he getsback in return is sharp canines and a curl of something edged with relief.‘This is real.’

Still, hand has not let up the bruising pressure. Tomorrowthere’ll be a mark visible to everyone, just there, a thumb-print bruisethat’ll ache when its pressed. A reminder. Sam doesn’t mean to catch lips withdesperate lips, but there’s muscle memory there, and fingers curl beneath thesweep of his long hair, against the weak-rabid jump of his pulse.

‘Trust me,’ Sulu murmurs against his lips, and Sam resiststhe urge to bite, to draw the catch of teeth in return, to taste blood on histongue. He breathes, because he was told to. He trusts, because he was asked.‘If nothing else —- trust in me.’

The world stops spinning. 

It might be fucking dramatic to think, but Dean could swear he feels the Earth screeching to a halt beneath his feet, because he just uttered the most important words of his life, I love you so much, Sam,  and all he got in return was…

“Yeah.”

Dean shuts it down, all of it, crams it back into the box he’s always kept it in, because this is the answer he’d always feared, laid out before him. Sam thinking he wanted this and the second Dean folded, the second he admitted anything, Sam would take it back. 

A self fulfilling prophecy. 

He walks slow, numb into the kitchen and grabs a cup from the cabinet before he fills it with ice and water from the fridge door, on autopilot. He steps over Sam’s big mutt and his tiny little rescue, both sitting outside of the bathroom door, and offers up the water.

By the time Dean gets back, Sam’s almost managed to wrap up the rising nausea, to push it back down through sheer force of will. He reaches out for the water, hesitates the barest second, lets weak fingers brush against Dean’s as he takes the glass.

He takes a cautious mouthful, tries to wash away the sour taste on his tongue that probably won’t actually leave until he thoroughly brushes his teeth and sleeps another couple hours. For now, it’s the best he’ll get.

He drains the glass, abandons it to one side. Hauls himself to unsteady feet using the towel rail for support, and suddenly he’s standing in front of Dean, in front of his brother, and everything has changed. He swallows, hard. Cowardly eyes fall shut, and he shakes his head as he sucks in a breath.

He doesn’t have the energy to be angry. Not right now.

“You got a lot of room to talk about being up somebody’s ass 24/7, little sister.” 

A pointed look to Sam in the backseat, curled up small in spite of his size, cheek pressed against the leather as he sleeps. 

But Dean’s not in the mood to fight, and the warm curl of grace (feathers) against his shoulders takes the rest of the vinegar right out of him. He sighs, shoulders rolling down and away from his ears. 

“Yeah, I’m right there. He’ll switch if I tell him to.” It’s a two way street. “Sometimes, I go-”

The words trip on his tongue, he doesn’t know exactly how to explain. “Away. Because Cas doesn’t need to sleep and I need a break.” From the onslaught of information, from going 24/7. To still be human, as best he can.

She doesn’t look back at Sam, because she doesn’t have to. She knows that he’s sound asleep, and she knows what he looks like when he sleeps, too, the way he’ll have his face pressed against the leather and fingers curled against nothing and the slightest line between his brows.

    “ --- we’re twins.”

Explanation enough, as far as she’s concerned, and she’s not giving Dean a chance to see the touch of colour that she’s fighting to keep from her cheeks. She and Sam, they were born to be all tied up in each other.

@duocorpora

“It’s me, Sammy. Cas is riding shotgun.”

That was the arrangement. Cas laying dormant until “the need arose”. Which is bullshit. They split the time. Dean isn’t going to make Cas have to sit around in the back of his skull. Not when there were landmarks to see, greasy food to try, and highway to drive. 

(It feels almost like it did when the twins were young enough that they still cared to see the sights. Before teenage years put a gulf between them Dean hasn’t been able to cross since.)

“You know how fucked up this is, right?”

She gets it. But that doesn’t make it any less weird, seeing her brother and wondering whether it’s him or an angel, being able to tell before he ever opens his mouth to say so -- the way he holds his head, the way he stands, the way he looks at things.

Dean’s never been the kind of guy who expected much out of life. An alcoholic father who set the bar real low, and a dead mother meant that his highschool graduation was met with a shrug. 

When he met Cas, when they moved in together and Cas opened a bottle of champagne when they closed on the rental space for the restoration business? Dean had been flabbergasted.

(You don’t hope for much, you don’t get disappointed. John Winchester wisdom.)

But now here he is, with a good business that he loves, a husband that he’d walk through fire for, and Sam. 

Sam still seems like a wet dream sometimes. 

It’s all he can do to stay put, to not run his hands along all that muscle, to start the fun a little early. 

But it’s all part of the game. 

Feet lift, knees tuck in; there’s only the faintest tremble of arms as they take his full weight, there’s a curve of a smile, almost too faint to be seen as centre of gravity shifts and legs tip up, arms push straight and lock until he’s one lean line, handstand just as solid as if he were on two feet.

Dean allows himself to be stopped, fingers splaying against the line to no man’s land. He won’t cross it, not yet, not without some good provocation. Sam’s interested, but Dean doesn’t want him cornered. 

(He’s been socked a good couple of times in his line of work, doesn’t want to make a habit of it.)

But he also doesn’t move his hand up. 

“What other kind of movies do you like?”

He asks with the same kind of breathless intensity he’d ask any other client if they wanted him to touch them.

“Uh, I like indie films. Like, the weird foreign-language ones that you can never describe the plot oif when someone asks, you know?”

He can feel his pulse in his fingertips, against Dean’s hand beneath them, and jack-rabbiting at the back of his throat. He thinks, for a split-second about Dean’s eyes without looking over to see them, and then something like panic trills at the edges of his mind.

Some men defy the natural order, that’s what his father had told the police when he’d finally been sat in an interrogation room in shackles. They deserve it.

Sam sits, sudden, pushes Dean’s hand away. Gentle, but firm.

There’s something to that. Dean can feel the weight of it. Reading people is part of being good at what he does, and it doesn’t take a master craftsman to see how important justice and the bad guy never getting away is. 

But he’s not gonna ask, even if all he wants to do is dig his fingers under the words and pry them out, to know every little thing that scurries beneath. (Distantly, he remembers his mother saying you should be a therapist or something, Dean. You sure like picking people apart.)

As quietly as he can, Dean whistles the O-K Corral duel melody, cutting off into a laugh as he slides his hand up Sam’s chest, to settle over the steady beating of his heart. 

“Mine was always horror movies.” A shrug is a perfect excuse to start walking his fingers back down again. “The old 80s ones. Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, Halloween…” Down and down and down until his fingers are brushing the waistband of Sam’s jeans. 

“I even watched the crappy ones like Pumpkinhead, and Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night 2.”

Sam huffs a breath of laughter along with Dean’s own.

“I, uh --”

His hand covers Dean’s own, stills it in its path before it can creep any lower. His cheeks are flushed high with colour, and he swallows hard. 

     “I saw Friday the 13th. Think I missed the rest.”

His snort follows who needs normal on command, because it’s always one of them who does it when Dad says it, or when Dean says it. (Dean might get it more gently, but it’s derision nonetheless.)

“Dean doesn’t even have to try. Girls just…line up.”

He’ll never admit that jealousy to Dean’s face, because that’s tantamount to treason. Sam hands her the pencil back, pillowing his head on his arms against the table. 

“Not like it even matters. We’ll be gone in another couple of weeks anyway.”

And he doesn’t want to lose his virginity to some girl he barely knows. As stupid as it sounds, he wants it to be special. 

Her brother’s an idiot; four weeks and two states back, he could have had Mandy Holland any way and anywhere he wanted. He hadn’t even noticed the way she stared at him, and she wasn’t about to point it out. She doesn’t need some girl trying to get between her and her brother.

She plucks the pencil from his outstretched hand, pokes him with it when his head hits his arms.

“Quit sulking,” she tells him. “No one except Dean thinks it’s weird, anyway.”

She hasn’t had sex, either. Dean doesn’t rib her for it. She’s pretty sure he’d murder anyone who threatened the virgin state of his little sister. She’s considered doing it anyway, out of spite, but she wants it to be special, too. 

She stands, intent on heading to the fridge, but first she flops an arm around her brother, leans down over his folded back.

By definition, he definitely needs someone other than his sister to lose his virginity. 

Not that he hasn’t thought about it. Butt he skitters away from that thought, because it feels narcissistic to think about her like that. Because she’s gorgeous and he’s a knock kneed scarecrow, or a bean pole, or whatever descriptor-of-the-week Dean’s chosen.

“You overthink things too.” It’s a family trait. He catches the pencil, lets it turn absently over his knuckles. 

“And you’re right, I know.” He shrugs. “It’d just be nice to have the normal highschool experience on some front.”

“Who needs normal?”

Not her own words. Parroted back from all the times it’s been said to her. They don’t get normal, they never have. And she’s desperate for it, craves it like dad craves a drink after a long drive, but there’s only so much you can hope for something before it turns bitter.

They share that feeling, she knows, just like they share everything else. Same name, same eyes, same stubborn set to their jaw when they want something, same deep-seated need to belong. Same thwarted ambition. So they wrap themselves up in each other, because no one else will ever understand, not like they do.