#lux-tuli

Sam stays out for twenty-five minutes. When he comes back, he lets in a blow of ice age with him, forcing Dean deeper into his hellfire-imbued shelter. His whole body is burning with frost. He watches Sam undress back to a pair of sweatpants and a black v-neck, cheeks red from the chilly air outside; he's brought a brown paper bag with him. It seems to be full.

"I hate Valentine's Day," Sam chuckles wearily and brushes snowflakes out of his hair, "It's everywhere."

"Shut up," Dean growls and closes his eyes bitterly, "You know it's the best day of the year."

"Am I twisting the knife?"

"Yep."

"Well," Sam's voice carries across the room a little faded and absent, "It'll come around again."

A snapping sound announces Dean that the kettle is on. Soon after comes the sound of simmering. Sam's steps move around in the room and Dean's barely hanging onto his consciousness; the world fades in and out with his ears seemingly full of water, and every breath he lets out burns in his nostrils. The bed bends under a man's weight, and the mattress adjusting underneath Dean's side makes him feel skinless and raw. He peers out of one eye and sees Sam towering above him with a small smile on him.

"Sit up," Sam tells him, lifting a steaming mug in his hands.

Dean moves slowly and stiffly, and his bones ache.

"You'll catch this," he mumbles as Sam presses the hot mug in his hands.

Sam shrugs. "I can handle it. Drink, it'll make you feel better."

Dean looks down into the cup. He can't smell a thing, but the rich brown colour tells him enough. A small smile crosses his lips as he sighs and gives in: the faintest hint of chocolate lingers over his tongue when he takes a sip of the drink. Beside him, Sam's making a spot for himself on the bed; he leans against the headboard and wraps an arm around Dean's shoulders, and before Dean can protest, he's pulled him close. His warmth feels much nicer than the coarse fabric of the blanket around Dean, and Dean wants to cuddle up closer like a cat brushing up against a petting hand. Instead, he grunts passionlessly and drinks another careful sip from his hot chocolate. Around him, the blanket's moving as Sam pulls it up and brings it over himself. His warmth takes over immediately, radiating like a smaller sun underneath the cover, and Dean sighs and leans back, his head resting over Sam's arm as he relaxes. His world shifting a little, he tilts his head and looks at Sam, grinning.

"'s gross," he mumbles, blowing aside Sam's hair tickling his face, "You're too close."

"Shut up," Sam tells him casually. He reaches out of the bed and pulls his laptop off the bedside table. Dean makes a sound as it plops down over his aching leg, its other side over Sam's, but his attention draws to it as Sam enters Netflix.

"What do you want to watch?" Sam asks him, his chin resting suddenly against Dean's head.

Dean sniffs. "Anything," he says with his eyes slipping closed, "'s long as it ain't stupid. And as long as I don't have to stay awake for it."

"There's an infinite amount of Star Trek," Sam chuckles, "You've seen it before."

"I can't sleep through Star Trek, you fiend," Dean grunts and pushes his brother's hand aside. He hovers the cursor over Cutthroat Kitchen for six seconds before Sam presses his finger into the button.

"Fine," the younger man grunts back at him as the episode loads, "Just don't fall asleep before you've emptied the cup."

"I won't," Dean mumbles; his eyes close for a while, stinging and burning. "Promise."

Sam nudges him in the side. It hurts like hell.

"Stop."

"I told you. Don't fall asleep."

"I feel awful."

"Quit whining."

Dean squints at the screen; the feel of Sam's face brushing over his feels both welcome and embarrassing. It takes him a while to realise that his brother's just left a soft kiss over his forehead.

"Gross," he complains and tries to move up to become at least as tall as Sam is, but he can't quite force his body up from its comfortable slump.

Sam makes a vague sound and rests his cheek against the side of Dean's head. His hand still rests over his brother's, and Dean accepts it; it blankets his bare skin nicely enough so that he doesn't have to move it back under the covers. His other hand's still wrapped around the hot mug and he drinks - the hot chocolate doesn't burn his mouth anymore, and the feel of the warm liquid moving down his throat in a large swallow makes him feel very warm and very comfortable.

He'd really, really prefer it if he could just fall asleep there, but he promised. Instead, he rubs his side against Sam and sighs heavily, leaning his head back toward Sam in return and mustering up the strength to drink again. Beside him, Sam's so soft and so nice and so warm in a way that doesn't make Dean feel like he's being burned at the stake. It's a nice change to everything else in his world.

"What did I do to deserve you," he mumbles, only half-aware of what he's saying.

Sam laughs softly. His unshaven jaw rubs into Dean's scalp when he moves. "You know that I hate Valentine's Day," he repeats to him then, and his voice seems a little shaky all of a sudden, like he's nervous, "But - I know what it means to you and how much you wait for it to come around every year. And the truth is, Dean, that - I look forwards to it, too, just because of how happy it makes you."

"Sap."

"Yeah, no, the worst is still coming," Sam chuckles, "Trust me."

They're quiet for a moment, and Dean's so tired that he forgets to anticipate the worst that Sam promised. Then, with the movement of the other's lips over his hairline, he wakes up to it.

"I love you," Sam tells him in a serious voice, "And I'm sorry you got sick this year."

"Huh," Dean hears himself let out; he's not entirely awake anymore. He feels the bottom of his empty mug press against his belly and he snuggles up closer to Sam again, as close as he can get. He feels his brother hold him a little bit tighter for a moment, and he really wants to open his eyes, but his lids are simply too heavy. Instead, he smiles a little.

"I love you, too," he mumbles, each word very slow and scattered, "Even though you're a big, gross sap."

"Right."

"Anyway."

"Anyway," Sam agrees; his hold around Dean grows a little lighter, but Dean can feel his fingers run down over his arm once as he relaxes, "Happy Valentine's Day, brother."

They were satellites in their grief, orbiting each other’s space, but never meeting, never speaking.  Jo and Ellen were gone.  Their collective failure hung over them like a shroud.  Finally, Bobby couldn’t handle it anymore.  He kicked them out, told them to work it out, that he had enough to deal with being in a wheelchair without babysitting two whiny pissbabies.  And the boys left because they didn’t know how fix anything anymore.

The hotel room was quiet.  Dean had gone out to get rip-roaring drunk and Sam had stayed behind, obsessively polishing a piece of a gun barrel.  When Dean returned, Sam was still sitting there.  Dean wasn’t nearly as drunk as he had planned.  Even though he had barely spoken five words to Sam since they had returned from their fight with Lucifer, he didn’t want to be grieving alone.  He sat on the bed opposite Sam and sighed deeply.

“Do you think it can be fixed?”  Sam asked softly.

“What?” Dean laughed bitterly.  “The world? The apocalypse?”

“No,” Sam held out the piece of gun barrel, shining brightly in the lamplight.  “This.”

“I think the Colt has done all it can do, Sammy.  We won’t be fixing it this time,” Dean said.  He spoke up again at Sam’s crestfallen look.  “But the Colt isn’t the answer.  It didn’t kill Lucifer.  So we don’t need to go on chasing that dead end.  We’ll find something else, another weapon, and we’ll set this right.”

“Wasn’t for Lucifer,” Sam muttered under his breath.

Dean almost dismissed it but there was a tone in Sam’s voice that he recognized from a long time ago, from when Sam had found out the secret their dad had been keeping from him, from when he had begged his big brother to promise to take him out if it would save the world.  And he reached out and grabbed Sam’s jaw with near bruising force and looked into his little brother’s eyes.  “Who was it for?”

“Dean...I…” Sam stammered.

“Who. Was. It. For,” Dean enunciated clearly.

“Well if we can’t kill the devil, at least we can wreck his plans.  He can’t do anything without a vessel and it needs to be me.  He brought me back when I tried to kill myself before.  Maybe if I was killed by the Colt, I would stay dead,” Sam admitted as he refused to look his brother in the eye.

“Sam...you…”  Dean stopped to will back his emotion, whatever it was.  “You killed yourself?”

“You told me to pick a hemisphere, Dean.  You were gone.  I didn’t think you would ever forgive me.  And Lucifer was in my head at every moment, telling me how much he needed me.  Of course I killed myself.  But I didn’t stay gone.  I was dead for maybe ten minutes before I woke up.  He even cleaned up the blood spatter, the bullet hole in the wall.  But no matter what I tried, I couldn’t stay dead,” Sam shouted.

“You...tried more than once?”  Dean whispered.

“Dean…” Sam stopped.  His brother was looking at him with rare vulnerability.  “Dean, I’ve done so much bad.  Even when I had the best intentions, I still destroyed everything.  I thought it could be my final gift to the world, take myself out of the way so that a better person...so that you could save it.”

“Let’s get one thing clear,” Dean said firmly.  “The world will never be a better place with you gone.  You may have made mistakes but you’ve always done your best to clean them up.  The world dealt you a shitty hand but you have always gotten back up and made the best of it.  And if you leave this world, I will not save it.  I will burn it to the ground and then follow you.  The world deserves two Winchesters, fighting side by side, or it gets none.”

Sam put his hands over his face.  His shoulders heaved once, twice.  Dean grasped Sam’s shoulder tightly.  Then he knelt in front of Sam.  He gently pulled Sam’s hands away from his face.  Sam couldn’t meet his eyes.  But Dean grasped Sam’s chin again, gently this time.  

“Listen to me,” Dean said softly.  “We’ll figure this out and we’ll do it together.”  And then he leaned up, getting in Sam’s space, giving his little brother ample time to pull away or say no, and he pressed his lips firmly to Sam’s.  Sam jumped a little but stayed, his lips soft but unmoving.  Dean moved to pull away but then Sam latched onto him like a drowning man, pulling him deeper into the kiss.  Dean isn’t sure if Sam lay down or Dean pushed him over but moments later, Sam was on his back and Dean was on top of him, kissing him with all the frenzy of someone who nearly lost their entire world.

Dean was the first to pull back.  He looked down at his little brother, beautiful, a little dazed, lips swollen and red.  “I need you,” he whispered.  “Will you stay with me?”

“Oh, baby,” Anna breathed, flipping the blanket off and sitting up in bed. Beside her, Ruby grumbled awake.

“What happened? Why are you crying?” Anna asked, thumbing the tears away from his chubby little cheeks.  

“Bad dream,” he whimpered, chin tucked close to his chest.

Anna wrapped him in her arms, holding him close to her chest and rocking back and forth. “Oh, honey. I’m sorry.”

“What’s going on?” Ruby asked, flipping on her own light and scooting into Anna’s space.

“Jesse had a bad dream.”

Ruby reached over her shoulder, stroking Jesse’s soft hair. The two locked eyes for a brief moment. Jesse had been having nightmares more and more often and it was starting to worry both Anna and Ruby. The adoption had only been final for about six months, and the nightmare had started at around the same time. Ruby had worried that the two might have something to do with each other, and as they kept getting worse, Anna was starting to worry the same thing. She’d thought, at first, that he might be the same way that she was as a child, experiencing night terrors and horrible vivid dreams for years before her first psychotic episode as a young adult. The thought had worried her much more than the nightmares being a result of adoption stress. Now though, she wasn’t sure which of the issues she would prefer them to be. Psychosis, as well as Anna,  had managed it so far, was not fun in the slightest, but it broke her heart that the reason he was stressed might be her fault in some way.

Jesse’s therapist still hadn’t come to a decision yet. She’d said that he was a fairly happy, pleasant kid, and the nightmare were unpleasant, but she wasn’t willing to rule out stress just yet. After all, the kid had just been adopted, had a birthday, and started a new grade all in the span of a few months. That had to be enough to stress any kid out.

“You wanna sleep with mom and me?” Ruby asked.

Jesse nodded against Anna’s chest. “Mr. Fuzzy, too,” he mumbled.

“Of course. Can’t leave Mr. Fuzzy out,” Ruby said, stroking the hair on the back of his neck.

She scooted back on her side of the bed, pulling the blanket down and flicking off her bedside light. Anna pulled Jesse into her lap, not an easy feat considering he was nearly sixty pounds of sleepy, dead weight, and scooted back on the bed. Jesse climbed off her lap and shimmied onto the bed, resting his head on Ruby’s pillow. He looked up at the two of them, eyes still wet but no longer whimpering, and curled into Ruby as she lay down.

“You okay there, kiddo?”

Jesse nodded.

Anna frowned, curling around her son and stroking his back. “I love you little bug,” she said.

“Love you too, mommas.”

It didn’t take long for him to fall asleep. Ruby followed soon after, and Anna didn’t get a chance to talk to her before she did. Anna lay awake for most of the night, falling into a light and fitful sleep when she actually slept.

~~~

The next morning was a weekend, so at least Anna and Ruby could sleep in a little before they had to get up and to things. Or, that was the plan at least. Jesse was determined to get up and play not later than nine in the morning, so Ruby graciously volunteered to feed him and toss a ball around with him while Anna got a little more sleep. She finally crawled out of bed a little after ten in the morning and dragged herself into the kitchen for a cup of coffee. She was halfway through her first cup when Ruby came back in through the back door, her face red already.

“He’s really making you work for it today, isn’t he?” Anna asked.

Ruby laughed, pulling two water bottles out of the fridge. “He’s getting fast.”

“How’s he doing today?”

Ruby leaned back against the fridge door, screwing the cap off the water bottle and chugging half of it. “Same as he usually is.”

Anna nodded, staring out the window. Jesse was kicking a soccer ball around in the grass, kicking it too far ahead of him and racing to get it before whatever imaginary players he was pretending to play against got it first. He kicked the ball at the fence and jumped up and down, pumping his fists in the air.

“I’m worried about him,” Anna said.

Ruby slid up beside her, wrapping an arm around her waist. She set her chin on Anna’s shoulder and sighed. “Yeah, I know.”

“What if it’s our fault,” Anna said.

Ruby frowned, and Anna could see her rolling her eyes out of the corners of her own.

“Babe, we’ve been through this. Whatever’s up with Jesse isn’t because of us.”

“But if it’s stress it’s gotta be us right?”

“If it is he’d be having these issues regardless of who winded up adopting him.”

Anna sighed. “Yeah, I guess that’s true.” She swirled her lukewarm coffee around in the cup.

“You’re worried it isn’t just stress, aren’t you?”

“It’s too early to tell if it’s anything more serious,” Anna said, draining the last of her cup.

“And that bothers you.”

“You know it does.”

Ruby sighed, squeezing Anna tighter around the middle. “If it is there’s not a lot we can do about it until something more happens.”

“I know,” Anna groaned. “I just wish we could do something now. I don’t like it that he’s having trouble like this. If it’s just stress and it’s only nightmares and night terror, why can’t they give him something to help him sleep?”

Ruby stroked up and down Anna’s arms, swaying back and forth softly. “I don’t know babe.”

“And if it’s more than that you’d think they’d know.”

Ruby hummed again. “You’d think.”

“I’m just worried, Ruby. I don’t want him to have to live his life needing medication. I know it helps and if he has to have it I want him to have it, don’t get me wrong, I just – I don’t want him to have to need it.”

“Yeah, but, at least he has you to help him through it if it is something more serious.”

Anna rolled her eyes. “I could barely manage myself for years. I’m not exactly a role model for managing mental illness.”

“Maybe not, but at least you understand it. If it was me before I met you, geez, I dunno. I don’t think I would’ve even known what to do about it. I’d probably say and do all the wrong things. At least you know what he’s going through. That’s gotta count for something, right?”

“Maybe.”

“And yeah, it took you a while to get a handle on it, but you’ve got it pretty much under control now.”

“After thirty years.”

“Better than sixty.”

Anna sighed again, setting her coffee cup down on the counter and turning in Ruby’s arms. “I guess.”

“Think of it this way, if it is something serious, like some kind of sign of psychosis later you have a better understanding of that then most people do. If it’s just stress it will go away and we’ll look back on this and give Jesse shit about it when he has his own kids who keep him up at night. But if it’s more than that, well, maybe there’s a reason you’re his mom.”

Anna huffed a chuckle. “Fate? Really, Ruby?”

Ruby shrugged. “I dunno. Could be. I don’t know all the secrets of the universe.”

Anna shook her head and kissed her wife on the forehead.

“I just know,” Ruby said, “that if anyone is cut out to be the best mom for Jesse, it’s you.”

“I dunno, I’d say there’s definitely one other person who might be up there, too.”

Ruby rolled her eyes and smiled. “Yeah, well, someone’s gotta teach the kid to kick a ball.”

They pulled away and Ruby chugged the rest of her water before tossing the empty bottle in the trash and swiping the still unopened bottle off the counter. “Speaking of which,” she pointed towards the back door.

Anna watched her go, smiling as she watched her wife and child play. Hopefully, the nightmares would fade over time, but if they didn’t, well, she and Ruby would be there for their son, no matter what.