#fun fun fun

He does this, sometimes, seemingly when he wants to leave Dean in his dust but doesn’t have the immediate ability to.

He leaves Dean quietly, drawing into himself, inside of his cheek clenched tightly between teeth, mouth turning down into a disappointed moue, eyes sliding off of Dean like he’s not even there.

When he’s really pissed, Sam’ll fuck off, jumping in the Impala or storming out of the motel room, or like that one time in Indiana, telling Dean to drop him off on the side of the highway and walking to the bus station.

But now that Dean is going to Hell, Sam leaves him like this. Leaves Dean in silence, leaves Dean for the company of his own brain.

Dean used to daydream about running away. He doesn’t know if Sam ever knew about that. He used to daydream of Dad and Sam waking up to a motel room alone and there wasn’t a single trace of Dean anywhere. They’d leave behind the razor plugged into the lone bathroom socket, because Dean always remembered to pack it, and they’d scream and fight as they loaded up into a dirty car.

The favorite part of that daydream was imagining Dad and Sam squirming. Missing him. Wishing they’d treated him better. Noticing immediately what a gaping wound Dean’s absence was.

Sam especially.

He’d turn to bitch and Dean would be gone. No one to remind Sam to tie his shoelaces, no one to escalate Sam’s jokes until they were both breathless, no one to eat the pickles off of his fucking burger.

He used to daydream about the moment Sam needed him back, and even more importantly, wanted him back. Wanted him around.

But Sam, growing and growing and growing, never did. Sam did all the leaving there was between them, soaked it all up like a sponge, allowing Dean none of it.

“Do you remember,” Dean says suddenly, and has to try again because his mouth is so thick and salty and dry. “Do you remember that case in Lawrence? The zombie chick?”

Sam, for a long moment, doesn’t react, like he hasn’t heard Dean at all. Dean takes another sip of his beer, and it leaves his mouth even drier.

“Angela?” Sam asks, and his voice cracks, and Dean wants to kiss him, kiss him, kiss him, despite it all. Of course he remembers her name. He probably remembers them all, written down in his corners where Dean’s not allowed to look.

He turns his head—the first time he’s moved in the hour they’ve sat out here—so Dean can see the faint outline of his profile.

Dean nods, then realizes Sam probably can’t see him. “Yeah,” He croaks.

“It wasn’t her, y’know?” Dean asks. Sam’s brow furrows. “It looked like her, and it had her memories, and her body, and her mind, but it wasn’t…her. She came back wrong.”

Sam has turned to look at him fully, and his mouth sets in a hard line. He thinks he knows what Dean is trying to say, but he doesn’t.

“Ruby came to talk to me.”

Sam’s mouth parts, he repeats her name, and his spine shoots straight. He turns around to cast a look out into the car yard, like Ruby will appear, blonde and scowling and right. She doesn’t of course, it’s just them.

They’re the only two living things in the world. And soon, it’ll just be Sam.

“What?” Sam asks, and he pulls himself up to sitting on Dean’s step, making careful effort so their knees don’t touch. Dean frowns. “When?”

It sounds like a demand, not a question.

“Last week,” Dean says. “After that suburban witch case.”

He doesn’t turn to look at Sam, despite the twin marks of heat on the side of his face, where Sam is staring at him intently. He can only see the dark, watery outline of him in his peripheral vision. Did that Ford belong to a family? A man? A woman? Did they love it? Clearly, they didn’t love it enough, if it’s in the same abandoned corner of the universe Dean’s in.

“When were you going to tell me?” Sam asks, tersely. Dean sighs out of his nose. The world in front of him blurs. He should probably blink soon.

“She told me that all demons used to be human. Did you know that?”

The cicadas scream. Sam does not.

Sam does not say or do anything. Not for a long while. Dean heaves air into his lungs.

“She used to be human. Ruby.” Dean’s thumb worries at the soggy label on his beer. “But Hell…corrupts the human soul. Makes you a demon, after a while.”

Sam’s breath catches, wetly. Dean only knows because every sense of his body is attuned to his little brother, even now. Anyone else would’ve missed the sound of it, Dean thinks.

“I.” Dean exhales through his nose. He blinks, and his eyes ache, burn, punish him for doing it. He should’ve left the world blurry and indistinct, and now he must pay the price of clarity.

“It takes a long time,” Dean says. “Or, at least that’s what Ruby said. For her it did.”

Dean takes a sip of beer. Time for the part he’s been meaning to say. The words have been sitting under his tongue so long they’ve congealed, become bitter.

“I—I am going to try—with everything I have—to give you the biggest fucking head start I can.” Dean says. Sam is breathing quickly now, wet inhales and wet exhales that saw out of him. “But.”

He has to clear his throat because it’s trying to swell closed.

“Given the cost of my specific ticket,” Dean says, “I don’t know.” He means to finish the sentence, but leaves it abandoned. He doesn’t know. He’d read the books. Exhaustively. At Sam’s request, even. Selling your soul—unlike Ruby, who fucked around with powers she might not have understood in 14-fucking-whenever—meant you were at the bottom of the heap. Given personal, ugly, intense attention.

Ruby had spent her entire mortal life tangling with evil forces, building immunity like calluses rubbing against the unforgiving metal of a gun. Dean’ll be raw and ugly and targeted.

Dean is reminded of an old book that Bobby kept on his desk, pressed underneath a stack of others until it had become hard and crisp like a diamond. He used to hand it to Dean when Dean gave him lip, and tell him to read it until Bobby decided he was done.

Malevolent souls are intrinsically perverted. They hunt and hurt the things they sought, cherished, or revered in life. They hold and amplify existing grudges. They profane previous idols.

What is a demon, Dean thinks, other than a malevolent soul? What idol does Dean have, other than Sam?

“I need you to promise me,” Dean starts, after a heavy, heavy pause in which Sam’s breaths have only gotten louder. “And I don’t care if you’re in diapers by then, Sammy, you gotta promise me, that if I come back, you gotta do what you need to.”

He looks at Sam finally, the last of it perched on his tongue: “It’s not gonna be me anymore.”

Sam looks blown open. His chest rises on a ragged inhale. The beer bottle clenched in his white-knuckled fist is almost tilting over. The circles under his eyes are so dark that they look startling and hollow against the shock-white of his scleras.

“No,” Sam says, and Dean opens his mouth but— “No, no, no.” Sam starts to shake his head. “No, no, that’s not, no—“ His mouth opens, closes, and Dean’s stomach sinks through the floor as Sam’s eyes brighten. “You can,” He murmurs, softly. “You can come back?”

For the first time in months, hope blooms across Sam’s face, kicking his brilliant little gears into motion.

Dean’s stomach riots, and he barely stops a heave.

“No, fuck, Sam, that’s not—“ He scrubs a hand through his hair. He stands, and his knees crack, wobble, as he does. “I’m not coming back. Something that’ll gut your wife and skin your kids is.”

Sam, off all fucking things, huffs a laugh, like Dean’s said something funny. He raises his brows and nods, casting a humored look back out at the yard, and Dean takes a step back towards the house. Sam isn’t getting it, so Dean tries to force him to see.

“You’re gonna be my first stop, I know it. Coughin’ sulfur and spittin’ smoke, I’m gonna crawl back to you, Sam, and you better not let me.”

“You better.” Sam snaps, and he’s standing, too, now, and he’s facing Dean, and he looks angry.

The beer bottle trembles in his fist. He stalks forward, and the porch light is off so the only parts of Sam’s face Dean can see is the glittering, furious pools of his eyes.

“Dean,” Dean’s flannel yanked into one of Sam’s big boy fists, his humid, beer-laden breath spilling across Dean’s mouth. Sam’s lips pulled into a snarl. “You promise me—you fucking promise me—that if you can come back to me, you’ll kill me.”

Dean doesn’t mean to let the punch fly but he does. He catches Sam strong across the jaw, and Sam reels back, a sharp, bright hurt noise shocked out of his throat. Before Dean can shake his fist out, Sam is on him with an almost inhuman roar, and Dean is knocked to Bobby’s porch with a deafening bam!

Dean’s ribs scream in protest as Sam lands on him, and Dean’s brain struggles to catch up as a punch catches his cheekbone, slamming his head into ragged wood. Dean’s body moves before his brain does, and he and Sam are scrabbling for dominance, knocking each other around in a furious tangle of limbs.

They tumble off of Bobby’s porch and sprawl in the dirt. They fight dirty and scream dirtier, Sam raking his nails across Dean’s face and screaming in his ear so loud that Dean’s teeth rattle, “You should’ve let me die!”

Dean knees him in the ribs and holds his forearm across the fragile cartilage of his windpipe and shouts so loud he drowns out Sam’s spit curses, “Fuck you! Fuck you!”

His brother’s flesh underneath him is familiar, his pain is cathartic, his violence is comforting. Dean’s nose might be broken but Sam is talking to him, Sam has come back, come home, and Dean sprawls open the welcome mat of his heaving chest, his furious words, his hateful glare.

They stare at each other, Dean straddling Sam’s squirming waist, heaving air into each other’s lungs. They blink, and Dean doesn’t know if the thing he’s feeling is anger. It throbs behind his breastbone, hungry and loud and violent. Sam’s eyelashes are so long they touch his brow.

Sam’s bottom lip is bleeding, and Dean’s nose throbs with a sharp pain that makes his eyes water. And then, his next inhale hitches, and he’s crying. Or Sam is crying. Or maybe they both are.

And then Sam is bullying his way into Dean’s arms, knocking him back on his ass, and he’s holding Sam like he hasn’t since Sam was six, hauled into Dean’s lap. He’s too big for it now, and his legs awkwardly splay over Dean’s thigh. Sam is sobbing so hard that he coughs when he tries to breathe. Dean is petting through his hair with so much force it can’t be comforting, but Sam practically head-butts him when Dean tries to hold him by the back of the neck instead.

Dean smears his mouth against Sam’s cheeks, his forehead, his neck. Settles against the crown of his head, a hand tangled in Sammy’s hair. He begins to rock them, two children lost in a graveyard.

“I’m sorry,” Dean says, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” For it all. For everything. For leaving, for inevitably coming back, for coming back wrong. Dean Winchester will never be able to stay dead. He will forever be forced back into animation, worse and more hideous and more broken every time.

“I don’t forgive you,” Sam pants, “I’ll never forgive you, Dean, I’ll never forgive you.”

Dean nods, shushing him, even as Sam continues to say it, a chant against Dean’s neck. His breath is canned, hot and moist on Dean’s clammy skin.