#nomercles

I am surrendering to gravity and the unknown. Catch me, heal me, lift me back up to the sun— I choose to live.

 Dean digs what ice they have out of the freezer and fills up the cooler, but he makes Sam carry it up the stairs. He figures that’s a fair trade, since he’s the one with the head injury.

“Wuss,” Sam says, and Dean shrugs. He’s not afraid to milk it if he has to.

It’s a chilly night, but there are no clouds and the moon’s a slim shard and they’re miles away from anything, so the sky is full of stars. The Impala’s a slab of gleaming dark, a dozen feet from the stairs, and Dean hitches himself up onto the hood. He kind of wishes he’d put on a warmer jacket. “What are you waiting for, Droopy,” he says. Sam sighs, a little louder than maybe he needed to, and Dean grins. There’s the sound of the cooler lid and sloshing ice—and then Sam flicks ice water into Dean’s face, like a little—

“Bitch!” Dean says, scrubbing at the flinching cold of it, and gets an icy-wet can dropped on his belly for his trouble.

“It’s what you get, jerk,” Sam says, and then he settles himself down right at Dean’s side, big and warm and right where he belongs, so Dean restrains himself to only elbowing him in the side once.

It’s quiet, out here. Dean tips his head back, ignores the throb from his busted-open temple and just—takes it in. The sky’s so… big. Been too long, since they did this, but Mildred had it right. They’ve been rolling hard enough, long enough, that sometimes he forgets the point of why they do it at all. Sunsets were never really his thing, though. Sam shifts, pressed up against him, and takes a long swallow of beer. Dean closes his eyes, breathes in. Cold as it is, there’s no real smell of anything, the world still and unobtrusive all around them, so all he can catch is Sam. He leans in a little closer, and Sam’s solid, takes his weight without moving an inch.

“You remember that time outside Vicksburg?” he says. Sam goes hm, almost inaudible. “After we got into the barfight with those rednecks?”

Sam snorts. “Oh, you mean the time you got in the barfight with those rednecks, and I had to light that guy’s truck on fire so we could get away?”

Dean grins. “Good times,” he says, and Sam sighs, but Dean would bet that he’s smiling, too. That was in the year after Dad died, and things weren’t really good, not at all. The world seemed like it was getting darker, all the time, and destiny seemed to be crawling closer no matter what Dean tried. That night, it didn’t matter. He and Sammy were on the same page again, after so long, standing back to back and fighting, and it was—all that Dean wanted, right then. That’s never changed. Not really.

“All that’s ever mattered,” he says, testing out the words in his mouth again. Beside him, Sam takes a long, audible breath.

He’s afraid of the Darkness. Afraid actually doesn’t even begin to cut it, but there’s no word that really encompasses how he feels when he’s around her. Blank, and still. Every worry, every fear, just—drops away, subsumed under the massive weight of her eyes on him. It’s a horror. He hasn’t told Sam, yet. He’s not sure he knows how to say it. Maybe it’s a vulnerability, something the banshee could exploit, and maybe it’s something that will come back to bite them in the ass, but there’s nothing he can do about that, right now. Right now he has this.

Sam makes a little, surprised noise when Dean kisses him, but he opens up right away, lets Dean lick into where he’s warm and tastes like beer. It’s been a little while, with Sam so jittery after the cage, but it’s still familiar, good and slow and comfortable. Sam slides a hand up his chest, palms over the side of his neck and rubs firm over the tender spot below Dean’s ear, so that Dean shivers, abrupt and hard, and he can feel it when Sam smiles against his mouth.

“Shut up,” Dean says, and Sam says quiet back, “Didn’t say anything,” and then shivers too when Dean tugs at his hair in retaliation. Dean kisses him again, for his trouble, and then they sit there for a few moments, shoulders pressed warm together.

After Vicksburg. They’d found an empty field, after the wild drive away and Dean almost crashing because he was laughing too hard, and they’d parked out and had a few beers and the sky had been full of stars. The laughing had died down, after a while, and they’d just looked up into all that night. Weird, the way some days just feel bigger than they ought to. How a single moment can echo down through the memory, solid as steel. Dean remembers that night in clear detail, but what he remembers clearest is this: looking over at Sam where they sat on the hood of the car, just like this, adrenaline still running bright enough that nothing hurt, and thinking, this is it.

Sam taps Dean’s thigh with two knuckles. “Hey,” he says. Dean hums. “Talking with Eileen last night, I realized. I never told you something.”

“What’s that,” Dean says.

“I could never do this without you,” Sam says, and Dean tears his eyes away from the stars to find Sam looking right at him, close and there. Sam’s mouth curls up on one side and he shrugs. “Not just hunting, you know. It’s—everything. My whole life, you’ve been there, and I just…” He shakes his head, looks down.

Dean knows. Follow your heart, Mildred had said, and okay, maybe that’s some pretty cheesy advice, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth following. He reaches out and squeezes Sam’s forearm through his jacket. “What’d I say,” he says. His voice is a lot rougher than he thought it’d be, but he doubts Sam’ll get him for it.

Sam huffs, and when he looks up he’s got his teeth in his lip. He reaches out and slides his fingers along Dean’s jaw, and Dean catches his hand, presses a kiss into the palm of it, hard enough that he can feel Sam’s bones. “All that’s ever mattered,” Sam repeats, after a few seconds, and Dean shrugs, and holds onto Sam’s hand, and looks into his eyes.

They’ll go inside, after a while. It’ll be warm. They’ll both be sore, a little, from the fight, but no worse than after any other fight, and so it’ll be easy to turn into each other, to go to bed and stretch out and take their time. They’ve got time. It’s almost a miracle, that that’s still true.

“Inside?” Sam asks, like he was reading Dean’s mind. His fingers curl against Dean’s grip.

Dean gives Sam his hand back. He fishes two more beers out of the cooler at their feet and holds one out to Sam. After a brief pause, Sam smiles, small, and takes it, and Dean settles right back against his side, props one foot on the cooler and pops the tab on his beer. “Let’s sit out for a little longer,” Dean says.

Sam cracks his beer and knocks it against Dean’s with a dull clink. “Deal,” he says, and they take a drink together.

go back to sleep, go back to sleep

 The half-destroyed distillery where he stashed Rowena is a four-hour drive from the bunker, just over the border into Missouri. Not bad, but not great, either. He almost wishes it were farther away, though he doesn’t want her too far out from under his thumb. It’s just that he’s out of practice with lying to Dean. Distance helps.

It’s almost two a.m. when he ditches the stupid little stolen car a few miles outside of Lebanon. If he’s lucky it’ll still be there when he needs it again, though he kind of hopes it’s not. It gave him a twinge in the neck, crammed into its tiny interior. He walks the rest of the way, keeping to the side of the empty dirt roads. No one out here, ever, and certainly not at this time of night. The spring air’s cool, damp from the earlier rain. The moon’s big and looming in the huge empty sky and he shoves his hands into his pockets, breathes it in. He’s still not feeling in peak shape, but he’ll manage. The blood loss was nothing, really. He was prepared to do a lot more to get what he needed. Dean’s all too happy to feed him lots of red meat, in the meantime.

The door creaks as loud as ever when he comes in. Lights are still all on, as he left them, and the war room’s empty, as is the library, as is the kitchen when he checks it. He leans against the table there in the empty bright and sighs, closing his eyes. If he had a cup of coffee or two, maybe he could check into more of the lore about the curse-work Rowena’s going to have to do. They haven’t read every single book, and he’d be happier knowing more of the theory behind what she might get up to, even shackled and trussed, while he’s gone. He rubs his hand over his face, presses a thumb into his temple and lets his head’s weight fall, the low achy headache pulsing against his bones. Behind his hand it’s suddenly all dark and he sways, the day settling down heavy under his skin, and, okay. He doesn’t want coffee.

He should shower. He walks instead down the steps, down the dimmer hallways and around the corner to his room. Dark, and empty, and he strips off slow, kicks his boots and jeans into a pile on the floor. He blinks at his bare, neat bed.

Dean’s door is closed, but Sam doesn’t bother knocking. They don’t, usually. Dean especially doesn’t. He slips in, lets the door fall half-shut behind him so there’s just enough light to see by, and there. Dean, sprawled out on his back, blankets hitched up because he bitches that it’s always cold, down here. Sam curls his fingers around the edge of the door, just looks at him for a few seconds.

The bed doesn’t creak when Sam slips in. Can’t. Thank god for stupid memory foam mattresses. There are two pillows in here now, since they share about half the time, but Dean’s got them both. Sam lays on his side and curls his arm under his head, the corner of sheet he could steal tugged up to his waist. He can see the edge of Dean’s profile, in the so-dim light. His cheekbone. The fine clean line of his jaw. The familiar pale shape of his ear—and how can an ear be perfect, Sam wonders. How is it possible that even after decades of familiarity, of knowing this body as well as his own—better than his own—it’s still a marvel, sometimes. How is it possible.

He spent an hour staring at the codex. All the symbols, the sloppy pictograms, smeared rust-brown into the awful pages. No worse than the Book of the Damned, but still grotesque. Maybe Sam’s sense of the grotesque is skewed, though, since all he could see when he looked at all those vile spells was hope. Didn’t matter what the Stynes threatened, or what Dean warned might happen as a result of meddling with the dark. Didn’t matter that Rowena had practically drooled at the thought she’d get her hands on it, and didn’t that set the alarms to ringing. Still—it didn’t matter, and it still doesn’t. It can’t. The book and the codex to read it, they’re tools, that’s all. Tools are meant to be used; it’s up to the craftsman to decide how. He knows it’s meddling with forces unknown, and he knows that how badly things could go, if it all goes wrong. He blinks and his eyes are hot, but dry. Dean breathes deep, sleepy and oblivious, and Sam curls in a little closer, forces himself to stop just staring. No sense in worrying about it, now that he’s made his decision. He’s never had the luxury of being choosy about how his world is saved, and he’s not going to start now.

It’s—what—Sam jerks awake and it feels like an instant since he closed his eyes, but his brain’s all fogged, useless. He lifts up on one hand and feels for his gun but—oh, Dean—Dean’s moaning, in his sleep, breath coming jagged. Dreaming again. Sam stares, for a stupid second, and then puts his hand flat on Dean’s chest, shakes him. “Dean,” he says, “hey, it’s okay—”

Dean snaps a hand up and grabs Sam’s wrist, and then his eyes open, completely alert all at once. He lets out a short shocked breath, blinks at the ceiling, and then turns his head and looks at Sam. “When did you get here?” he says, after a second. His voice is low, pitched to rumble under Sam’s hand.

“Been here,” Sam says, which is mostly true. Dean still hasn’t let go of his wrist, and it’s—starting to hurt, a little. He puts on a smile. “I was trying to get some sleep.”

Dean snorts, and lets go of his arm, sits up. “Well, didn’t mean to interrupt your beauty rest,” he says, rubbing his eyes. “God knows you need it.”

“Cute,” Sam says. He rubs his wrist, he hopes unobtrusively. Dean shifts around, gets his feet on the floor, and while Sam watches he plants his hands on the bed on either side of his hips and drops his head down, sighs. He’s broader now than he used to be. Works out when the Mark won’t let him sleep, but right now he just looks… tired. Sam clears his throat. “You want to talk about it?” Dean gives him a look, over his shoulder, and Sam shrugs. “Just asking.”

“Right,” Dean says, with an edge of sarcasm, but then he sighs, again, and shakes his head. “Right,” he says, more softly. He sounds—defeated. “Just—not much to talk about, Sammy.”

Sam licks his lips and sits up, all the way. He catches Dean’s shoulder, and tugs, and he’s aware of the gift it is that Dean still lets himself be turned around. That he still is willing to be here, with Sam, that he’s still the brother Sam knows, has always known, even when brutal circumstance has torn them apart. Dean’s expression is hard to read, but he doesn’t move away when Sam puts a hand to his jaw—just closes his eyes, leans into it.

It’s dim enough in here that Sam can’t really see the Mark. They haven’t talked, really, about the future Dean sees, about the decision he’s willing to let Sam make, and Sam doesn’t want to get into it. He drags his thumb over Dean’s cheek, stroking over the stubble, and then tugs Dean in, kisses him, soft, once. He’s not giving up. He never will.

“I’m tired,” Sam says, when he pulls back. Dean blinks at him. “It’s like four in the morning. I want to sleep.”

Dean wraps his hand over Sam’s wrist. Softer, now, not that Sam will mind if it bruises. He gives Sam a long look, and though his eyes are harder to see in the dim, Sam still knows the look in them. “You want me to stay?”

Sam lets out a little huff, can’t help it. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, I want you to stay.”

Say hello to the shrinking in your head: you can't see it, but you know it's there, so don't neglect it.

Sam walks into a bar.

There’s a hunt. Werewolves, maybe, or ghouls. He and Dean have been working the case and he’s still not sure which it is, which is kind of a worry. Either way—he knows what works. He sits at the bar and pops his neck, shrugs his shoulders, but it’s just out of habit. He’s not sore anymore, not tired. A relief, after the long months of feeling so shitty with the trials. He can have a beer now without puking, while he waits for Dean to get back from interviewing the sheriff, and hell, he’s going to indulge. Been long enough without.

The bartender’s tall—maybe as tall as Sam is. “What do you need?” he says, and he’s not smiling.

Sam’s dreaming. There’s a hunt, he thinks, and it’s something—it’s pulling at his attention. Angels, and he doesn’t know why he’s so scared of them, why there’s some kind of hollow yawning dread pulling open the pit of his stomach. He looks at Castiel and feels no warmth, feels nothing but pure skittering terror and he

Sam walks into a bar. The light’s dim, the bar long and dark and familiar. Bars are all the same, in the end, and he takes a stool close to the end, leans his elbows on the counter. He wants a drink. The bartender stands in front of him, silent, and Sam says, “Hey, just a pint of whatever’s on tap,” but the bartender doesn’t move. He’s tall. Maybe Sam’s age, or Dean’s. He frowns, sits up a little more. Thinks, maybe the guy didn’t hear him, and he says, “Hey, buddy?” because it pays to be polite even with assholes, and the bartender leans his hands on the counter, looks right into Sam’s eyes, and

Sam spreads his thighs wider, stretches out against the plush leather back of the armchair. Dean’s mouth is—god. He’s almost too sensitive, but the soft thorough cleaning he’s getting is just so good he can’t find it in himself to complain. Rough hands smooth up over his belly, pet over his hips, and when Dean goes to pull back Sam picks his head up off the chair back with an effort, cups the back of Dean’s head and runs his fingers through the soft short hair. “My turn, isn’t it,” he says, and he’s drowsy but he really is more than willing, only Dean picks his head up and licks his lips and grins, and maybe it’s not the wide pleased got-the-cream smile Sam’s used to but it’s pleased enough, and he says, “Nah, I’m just feeling greedy, Sammy,” and he leans in and kisses Sam, soft, quick enough that Sam finds himself leaning forward, wishing for more. Dean’s already zipping him up, though, neatening him away. Sam wishes he would look up. He wants to see Dean’s eyes, and he doesn’t know why Dean isn’t

Sam walks into a bar and the bartender looks right at him. It’s like he was waiting. Sam sits at the bar and leans on his elbows, asks for a beer.

The bartender looks at him.

Sam drinks his beer, cold bitter at the back of his tongue, and the bartender looks at him. “What do you need?” the bartender says.

Sam puts his pint down and shrugs. “I’m good,” he says, and it’s the truth. Nothing hurts, and there’s a hunt, and Dean’s healthy and happy, and everything is as it should be. Not like this guy needs to know that, though.

“Of course,” the bartender says, slowly. He talks stiffly, awkwardly. “You are—happy.”

Sam frowns a little, though he smiles, too. “Yeah, buddy,” he says, and toasts the guy with his beer. “I’m good.”

There’s—blood, oh—oh, shit, there’s so much—blood purling out from between his fingers, a weird lucky shot and Dean’s crying out, yelling his name across the awful reeking basement, and Sam wavers, shocked, stares at the blood on his fingers for a weird moment thinking, he didn’t expect this, that this terrible dusty place and this stupid ghoul would be the end, after everything, and he falls to his knees and feels the blood warm against his chilled skin and thinks, Dean—

Sam walks into a bar. There’s a hunt. There’s something—wrong, maybe, but he can’t quite put his finger on it. The bartender is gripping hard onto the brass railing. “Whatever’s on tap,” Sam says, and the bartender looks up at him with weird grief on his face, something so vivid that Sam startles still, for a second, frozen half onto the bar stool, and the bartender says, “I am sorry, Sam Winchester,” and Sam thinks what, he thinks how do you and he also thinks why but then the bartender squeezes his eyes closed and bows his head and

There’s time missing. Miles go by and Sam isn’t—he doesn’t remember them. Dean’s worried, he can tell, even though all he gets when he talks about it is dismissal, lots of ‘oh, the trials,’ and ‘you just need more time to heal,’ and, well, Sam loves him but Dean talks a lot of bullshit, a lot of the time. He’ll crawl out of Dean’s bed and go take a shower and then blink at himself in the mirror, completely dressed and brushing his teeth, and have no idea what happened in the interim. He’ll go for a jog and not remember a thing. He looks at himself in the mirror and he’s okay, he recognizes himself, but sometimes, sometimes he’ll open his own eyes and there in the split second when his eyelids part his eyes spark unfamiliar and he thinks

Sam walks into a bar. There’s a hunt, he knows there is. He just—can’t remember the details, right now.

The bartender looks like he’s been crying, though Sam doesn’t notice until after he’s already asked for a pint, and by then it’s too late—he sits there, awkward, while the guy goes through the motions, pouring off the foam, setting the full glass carefully in front of Sam on a neat square coaster. “Thanks,” Sam says, trying to pass it off as normal.

“Do not thank me,” the bartender says, voice a deep scrape. He leans on the brass rail, right in front of Sam, looking into some middle distance. Sam takes an awkward sip—cold, bitter hops lingering in the back of the throat like sorrow, and it’s hard to swallow it down. The bartender closes his eyes. He says, “I am not sure of my course.”

Sam puts the glass down, cups his hands around the cold solidity of it. “Nobody is,” he says. The bartender blinks at him, and hell, Sam’s half-surprised himself, but this guy doesn’t expect him to be Agent Rose, or a hunter with the answers. They’re just two guys, talking.

“Do you not think—“ the bartender starts, and swallows. He folds his arms over his chest, standing stiff and straight. “I thought, always, that there must be a plan, for all of us. That there must be meaning. Now, I am not so sure.”

Sam shrugs. He and Dean have had this conversation, in various ways, half a dozen times. He always feels like he comes to a different conclusion. “I don’t know the answer to that,” he says, semi-honestly. “I think, all you can ever do is what you believe is right.” The bartender looks directly at him, and Sam shrugs, again. “I mean, what’s the alternative?”

There’s a pause, and the bartender nods. “Of course,” he says, but quietly, like he doesn’t mean for Sam to hear—or like it doesn’t matter, if he does. Sam sips his beer and the bartender nods, and meets his eyes. He seems taller, brighter. His shoulders square out and for a second Sam sees him—pure, strong. Beautiful, and that thought’s a surprise but the bartender earns it, somehow. He smiles at Sam and it’s—beautiful. He says, “Thank you, Sam Winchester,” and all Sam can see after that is light.

one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, nine, nine, nine…

By the time the Impala’s carved a path out of New York, the sun’s setting. Dean’s not really leaning on the accelerator. There are problems up ahead, yeah, and they’re big ones—but everything urgent in him sits in the sleeping hulk of his brother, silent and slumped on the other side of the bench. Everything else just pales in comparison.

Pennsylvania’s blurring into Ohio and Ezekiel hasn’t said a word, not since they got into the car. Sam just looks like he’s sleeping, curled up with his forehead against the window, and he’s never going to be small again but sometimes he fakes it pretty well. Dean keeps glancing over. Feels like he’s looking at Sam more than at the road, and hell. Who can blame him. He’d be touching Sam, too, if he thought he could get away with it, but he doesn’t want to wake Sammy up. Or—or Ezekiel, maybe. Whichever. He doesn’t have the radio on, or a tape, and he’s coasting along I-90 at an easy seventy-five, nothing but the sound of the engine and the highway wind. It’d be peaceful, if he weren’t sick to his stomach.

His face still hurts, a little, under the new whole skin. Ezekiel healed him, the tiniest glow of white-fire magic so that Sam wouldn’t suspect anything. Dean wasn’t hurt in the church, after all. Not like Sam was. Dean tightens his hands on the steering wheel. Wouldn’t do to have Sam suspect, Ezekiel had said, and Dean had gone along because—because, Christ, what the hell else can he do.

He’s going to have nightmares about that church. About Sam’s too-skinny face, the hollows under his shocked-open eyes. The blood slipping dark to the rotting sacred floorboards and Sam empty-handed, looking at Dean like—isn’t it obvious? Glowing on the inside while he peeled himself open, bloody wet and mutilated, gleaming white-gold lighting up the tears streaking down. And then—even after, after Dean kissed him careful, wrapped up his split palm and brought him in close. After the fall, after he dragged a half-comatose Crowley out and shoved him into the damn trunk. That drive, with Sam shuddering fly-stung in pain, moaning, collapsed over and into himself like just being alive hurt, and nothing Dean could do—that was a nightmare, all on its own. He tried holding onto Sam’s hand, just so Sammy could maybe ground himself, but Sam flinched, said stop, stop it hurts with his voice cracked right down the middle. Nothing for it but to put the pedal to the floorboard and drive with the sour taste of Sam’s looming death lingering at the back of his tongue, ignoring the horrific lightshow all around and hoping a hospital could provide some kind of miracle, if heaven couldn't.

A semi passes by and he glances down. Accidentally let the speed drop to sixty. If Sam were awake he’d be getting no end of crap for it. He drags a hand down his face and tries to focus. The sun’s really down, now, and they’ll be coming up on Cleveland soon. They’re headed back west, back toward the bunker, but he’s not really driving with anywhere in mind. He tries to think when he slept last and it’s kind of a blur, but he doesn’t want to stop. Can’t imagine sleeping before Sam wakes up. Can’t chance that this, Sam up and living, could be a dream.

All he wants is Sam. He chances a look over and Sam’s still sleeping, his face healed-up and soft in the passing headlights, even if he still looks wrung-out. Nearly hurts, to look at him, and Dean refocuses on the road, dashed yellow line skimming past and disappearing under the dark hulk of the car. So familiar, and not enough to distract him. He just doesn’t—he doesn’t understand how it got so wrong. The year’s been rough, no doubt about it. He knows that some things got said that maybe shouldn’t’ve, and that’s on him. It was just… hard, when he got back. Hard to talk, hard even to touch without flinching, and there were all those nights of not sleeping, of turning to fighting because it was easier, and it turns out it was doing something to Sam.

He forgot. For all Sam surges ahead, does whatever he wants, for all that Dean’s been on his back for the kid for over fifteen years now, for what feels like his whole life, sometimes Sammy’s nothing more than his little brother. Picks up shit Dean never meant to say and holds it close, tucked under his big heart, long past when Dean’s forgotten whatever fight they had that prompted it. Stores up words and uses them like knives, to cut himself to ribbons. Like it’s ever been what Dean says that matters.

He remembers, though. He made Sam a promise, in the church, but Sam made him a promise, too. All the way back, months ago. That first trial. Sam promised that they’d make it to the end, together, and Dean—well, he bought in. Deep down inside, he believed Sam. Believed that no matter what kind of day it came to when they finally had to cash in their chips, they’d be doing it together. It’s been hard, these last months, no doubt about it. Hard on Sam, and hard on Dean, too, but—he remembers that night, in the girl’s room at that stupid ranch. No matter how freaked and worried he’d been, there was Sam’s big hand wrapped around the back of his neck, conviction lighting him up, his thumb dragging over Dean’s jaw, making Dean meet his eyes. There’s light at the end of the tunnel, he’d said, half a smile on his face, a dimple curving into his cheek. Dean can remember it like it was yesterday, and he’d believed it. If only he’d been able to convince Sam that his belief was true.

Sign says Cleveland’s coming up in forty miles and he shifts in his seat, dry-eyed and aching. He’s still nauseous over the choice he made. About the light that’s lurking, wrapped around his little brother’s soul. He’s going to have to lie to Sam, for who knows how long, and that guilt’s already sitting heavy in his chest. Well, it can take a number. They made each other promises. To be together. Hell came long ago and Dean feels like he’s about to drown in the high water, but that doesn’t matter. No matter what, he’s going to look after Sam. Going to do his damn job. Keep his promise. Maybe the light at the end of the tunnel’s going to turn out to be hellfire, but they’re still going to get there, side by side. One way or another.

Shy away, shy away, phantom Run away, terrified child

Donald’s chatty. Dean sits rigidly in a nonthreatening slouch in the passenger seat of the cab, looking out the window at the boring view off I-81. Donald’s got an easy gig, driving his rig from Harrisonburg down to Knoxville, and he’s told Dean at length about his kids, his wife, his church, his years on the road. “Yessir,” Donald’s saying, now, while Dean breathes steadily and watches Tennessee blur greenly past them. “Driving’s not the most exciting work in the world, that’s for sure, but it’s a good payin’ job and I got union benefits, so it could be a helluva lot worse, you know?”

“Yeah,” Dean says. Donald hasn’t seemed to care much about the lack of response. He rolls on, talking about—shit, Dean doesn’t even know, something about dental. A sharp throb pulses out from his forearm. He grips it as unobtrusively as he can, his eyes shuddering closed. God, Benny. Stop. The ache’s a constant worry, Benny’s self all locked up inside him and his skin feeling like it’s stretched further than it’s meant to go. It—really hurts, worse than most things Dean’s felt, but it’s a debt that he owes. He’s going to pay it.

A highway sign flicks past. Sixty miles to Knoxville, and then he can get out of this awful truck, away from Donald’s chatter and the talk radio mumbling along underneath that. It’s… loud. He’s not used to it, not anymore.

He blinks away tiredness. He hasn’t felt right, sleeping. Not yet. He’s got a job to do, first. After he held up that couple of kids back in Maine, there was the car to steal, and he drove that until it ran out of gas, and then he walked six miles to the nearest convenience store and cleaned up as best he could in the bathroom, and then it was hitching, trying to look normal, nonthreatening. Remembering that sleep was something necessary, not just a luxury whenever he and Benny caught a break—hunger something that had be addressed, not a constant distant gnawing that had to be ignored in favor of the fight. He caught a catnap in a quiet little patch of woods outside Allentown, and there’s been the granola bars he’s been parceling out from what he stole from those kids. They taste like cardboard, but his stomach doesn’t feel like it’s up to much more.

“Son? You with me?”

He starts, but at least he doesn’t pull his knife. He’s been holding onto his arm too tightly and he releases it, deliberate and easy, and over the spreading pulse of pain he says, “Yeah,” again. His voice sounds like he’s been gargling glass.

“I was just askin’,” says Donald, still looking out at the highway. They’re in a string of semis, all going about ten under the speed limit. Dean’s been trying to ignore that, so he won’t scream. “I was wondering, where’d you serve.”

Dean looks straight at him, shocked into it. “What?”

Donald doesn’t turn, just shrugs and checks his mirrors. He’s paunchy and bearded, and he doesn’t look much at all like Bobby but they could be in a line-up together. He tugs on his used-to-be-black trucker cap. “Just wondering. 1st Armored down out of Fort Bliss, myself. Recognize the look.”

Dean looks out the window, doesn’t say anything. A mile rolls past, endless green and trees out the window, the afternoon suffused with golden summer light, and Donald picks up chatting again, talking about his sergeant from back when, what a hard-ass he was, and Dean’s off the hook, again. Funny, how often people screw that up. Sam used to say, it’s not like people could really know the difference.

He closes his eyes, his arm pulsing again. He stole a cell phone back in Augusta and it’s been sitting heavy in his pocket, waiting for him to pick it up. He hasn’t been able to bring himself to make the call. He doesn’t know why.

Back in Purgatory he’d been certain that Sammy was here, waiting, and he’d driven himself and Benny and Cas ragged, running low and dangerous through those dim awful woods, trying to get back. To get out, to be where he belonged.

The radio’s squawking about something, a sale on trucks at some local dealer. It’s grating, the salesman’s broad twangy voice needling into Dean’s ears. He wants to throw up, for a few seconds, and then immediately he wants to shoot the fucking radio, his hand twitching toward his hip before he stops it and balls it into a fist against his thigh. He breathes in hard through his nose, out slow through his mouth, over and over, and luckily Donald’s quiet for a minute, just the goddamn stupid radio playing its awful commercials breaking the quiet, and Dean manages to wrestle himself back under control. He’s got a job to do, and he’s going to do it. Won’t do anyone any good to have him assault some stupid normal truck driver and cause a four-semi pile-up on I-85 in the middle of nowhere, Tennessee.

Behind his eyes the woods are grey and dangerous, familiar, and he looks instead at the lush green outside the window. Humid, here. The sun’s bright. The truck’s cab is cool with the steady hiss of A/C, not the constant absence of any kind of real life. It’s eleven hours to where Benny said his bones are planted, assuming Dean can catch a ride relatively soon once he escapes from Donald. Assuming he doesn’t have to mug anyone, or hustle someone. He doesn’t know if he can, if it comes to it. He feels like he might bite a guy’s dick off, cut his throat, before he’d earn a ride, and then what.

Benny slips under his skin, roiling, and Dean shifts in his seat, his muscles gone rigid and aching. Eleven hours and then the digging, alone, assuming he even finds the damn cemetery in the first place. Maybe a day more. He doesn’t know what’ll happen when he finally pulls open the stupid phone. If he’ll even get an answer.

He just wants to go back. He wants his car, and he wants a double cheeseburger, extra onions, and a cold beer, and Sam, and quiet. He doesn’t think it’s too much to ask. He imagines making the call, Sam’s voice on the other end. A weird tight feeling takes over his throat and his fists are clenched too hard, fingers laced together and his knuckles grinding. Hard to breathe, for a minute.

“Okay, I’m gonna stop over at the Pilot here in a few miles,” Donald’s saying, over the rushing in Dean’s ears. Dean blinks, and somehow they’re closer to town. “You need to call anyone, or you need any cash or anything?”

“No,” Dean says, after a minute. He unclenches his hands, deliberately. “I’ve got it taken care of.”

Out of the corner of his eye he can tell Donald’s looking at him again. He doesn’t meet it. Donald’s not going to matter, once he drops out of the cab and gets his feet back on solid ground. It’ll be one more step completed, and then it’s just—putting one boot in front of the other, making his way south. Saving Benny, doing what he promised, that’s his job for now. It’s all he can focus on. He’ll worry about the rest later.

Close my eyes just to look at you, taken by the seamless vision, and I close my eyes, ignore the smoke, ignore the smoke, ignore the smoke

 Dean’s leg is killing him. Not literally—though god, sometimes it feels like it. He blinks into the pre-dawn light and it’s a deep-down misery, low and insistent. Been long enough since he really broke a bone that he kind of forgot what it’s like. At least he’s got a real cast, this time, not just whatever splint they can manage to throw together from the scraps of field first-aid they’ve both got. He shifts on the couch, uncomfortable, and a fresh sharp wave of agony sinks into his flesh, a low relentless thrum like a gong-strike, and he makes a noise, can’t help it.

“Hey, you okay?” Sam says, from somewhere. Dean breathes through the pain, doesn’t answer. “Dean, hey, hey.”

A grounding hand on his shoulder. Sammy, staying close. Dean takes another deep breath, and another, and when his leg stops being the center of his universe he says, voice scratchy, “You’re supposed to be sleeping.”

Sam huffs. “Yeah.” There’s a little pause, and then Sam’s hand leaves his shoulder, and there’s footsteps over the creaky floorboards. “How am I supposed to do that with you whimpering in pain all the time, huh.”

Dean opens his eyes at that, craning around as much as he can without moving his lower half. “Okay, screw you, wonderboy, I do not whimper.”

“Yeah, keep telling yourself that.” Sam’s rummaging through the cabinets in the dusty kitchen, but when Dean blows a raspberry he slants a half-grin over one shoulder. The fire’s going, and there’s a little misty grey light coming in the windows, so Dean can see him okay but he can’t see details, so he won’t have to face the smeared purple under Sam’s eyes, or the livid bruise at his temple where the Leviathan-freak caught him one. Sam’s back to going through the cabinets, opening drawers and moving confident and easy. Dean would never guess, to look at him.

“What are you lookin’ for, anyway,” he says, sinking his head back into the musty couch again. “Don’t think Rufus left any Lucky Charms.” He lets his eyes sink closed, trying not to think about all of the places he aches. “Or—uh, are Lucky Charms kosher?”

Sam’s rattling around pauses, and Dean’s sure the top of his head is getting a look. “You’re an idiot,” Sam says, dry, and Dean smiles where Sam can’t see it. The sink runs for a few seconds and then the footsteps come closer, and when Dean opens his eyes again Sam’s sitting on the sturdy coffee table, holding a mug of water.

“Room service?” Dean says. He’s not sure he wants to move to take the mug. His leg really, really hurts.

Sam rolls his eyes. “I was looking for, uh, Lucky Charms for you, actually,” he says, leaning his elbows on his knees, “but it doesn’t look like Rufus left any painkillers around. At least, not that I can see. But we’ve got a few Tylenol left, so.”

Dean closes his eyes briefly. They won’t help. “Okay, nurse, hand ‘em over,” he says, and dutifully levers himself up onto one elbow, ignores the wrench that just shifting his weight causes, and takes the three pills Sam hands over, gulps them down with the full mug of water. A mistake, maybe, since he’ll just have to pee even sooner, but the water’s cool on his throat, moistens his too-dry lips. He wants a beer, but they’re out. More’s the pity.

Sam takes the mug back from him and puts it out of the way on the other side of the coffee table. He’s giving Dean a steady look, not without sympathy. “Bobby should be back tomorrow,” he says, echoing Dean’s thoughts.

“Yeah,” Dean says, shifting again and trying not to wince. “Real drugs, I can’t wait. He better bring a few twelve-packs, too.”

Sam snorts. “Yeah, mixing booze and painkillers, always a winner.”

His voice is soft, though, and Dean swallows. He’s been too hurt and it’s been way too crazy—and, okay, maybe a bad choice of words. He misses Sam, though. His Sam. That’s not fair, he knows. Still.

He gets a surprised look when he reaches out and takes Sam’s good hand, but he’s not looking up and so he ignores it, like a champ. He runs his thumb into the smooth familiar palm, over the mound where Sam’s own thumb starts, wraps two fingers around one of Sam’s longer ones and drags their skin together, slow. Sam’s fingers curl around his, just a little, just for a moment, and Dean’s eyes flick inevitably over to where Sam’s other hand sits on his knee, the white bandage neat and glaring wrapped ‘round it. They’ve only been here a few days, but Sam has had to re-wrap it four times. Dean’s re-stitched his palm twice—and Sam just sat there, mouth tight with pain but unflinching, his eyes steady on Dean’s shaky exhausted work. He doesn’t want to have to do it again. He knows he will.

Sam’s fingers slide in his, wrap around his wrist. He startles and pulls against the grip but it’s steady, and when he looks up Sam’s watching him. Watching him, present and focused, and Dean can’t tell if Sam’s seeing something deeper in the shadows of the room but he doesn’t want to ask. Doesn’t want to know.

“Bobby’s not going to be back until tomorrow, right?” he says, throwing on a half-leering smile. Sam’s brow furrows, though he nods. “Hm. Okay. Come over here, big boy.”

He yanks, careful, and Sam jerks forward, saying what—and they don’t really do this, but Dean’s tired and in pain and it has been a rough month—year—whatever, and so after a minute of very careful maneuvering and Dean swallowing down a yelp when his leg bumps against the other arm of the couch, he’s laid out on his back again, his head in Sam’s lap and pillowed on one long lean thigh. He closes his eyes. Sam’s warm.

“You know I’m going to give you no end of crap for this when you’re better, right?” Sam says, bone-dry this time, but he’s got his good hand settled on Dean’s chest, fingers of the other playing slowly through Dean’s hair.

Dean turns his head in toward Sam’s stomach, cheek brushing worn denim. “Shouldn’t mock an invalid, Sammy,” he says, and when Sam snorts he bites the inside of his cheek against a smile. Maybe it helps, to keep Sam’s focus on him. Maybe it doesn’t. Worth a shot, anyway. Lucifer has ruined enough of their lives—he can’t take this, too. Dean licks his lips. “You know,” he says, conversationally, and rubs his cheek against Sam’s leg. “Could totally blow you like this.”

Sam flicks the top of his head. “I don’t think so,” he says. “Not unless you want to choke yourself to death.”

“Oh, don’t sell yourself short there, Sasquatch,” Dean says, but he heard the smile in Sam’s voice. He shifts, carefully, and Sam’s good hand rubs over his chest, soothing and slow. A log breaks in the fireplace and there’s a crackle, but the cabin’s otherwise quiet around them. Dean could fall asleep, right here. He hopes it’s as quiet, for Sam.

“Hey, when I wake up,” he says. Sam makes a little hmm sound. “Nurse, you think I could get a sponge-bath?”

Sam sighs, long and exaggerated. Dean grins. Maybe Sam’s faking being okay, maybe it’s all going to fall apart—but that sound, that’s one hundred percent Dean’s little brother, and right now he doesn’t care if it’s an act. He’ll take it.

to draw out the timid wild one, to convince you it’s alright 

There’s a sound, a deep rumble, and Dean’s awake and off the couch and holding his blade before he even really knows what’s happening, crouched ready behind the cabin door. He shakes his head, presses himself back against the wall. His heart’s beating hard and fast and he readies the knife, flips it up so the blunt edge lays alongside his wrist--only, wait. The rumble cuts off, and there’s a creak. He--he knows that sound. He sucks in a breath, through his teeth, feeling almost dizzy.

The door opens and he crashes forward, tackles the intruder even as he knows--he hopes--and oh god all that familiar weight crashes down beneath him and he splashes holy water, and borax, and grabs one long flailing arm and slices he hopes not too deep, and there’s no hiss, no bubbling skin, oh thank god and he grabs those big broad shoulders and looks into a gasping shocked face and says, “Sammy,” voice some low weird scrape he doesn’t even recognize.

Sam stares at him, open-mouthed, half-soaked and bleeding. “Okay,” Dean says, and sits up over Sam’s hips, “okay, you need--hold on--” and he does the tests himself, proves it, because he’s--he’s here, he’s real and he’s him, he knows it but Sammy doesn’t, maybe, and when he’s bleeding, too, blood trickling wet down the inside of his arm Sam grabs at his hands, stops him, says, “Dean, you’re--you’re alive,” with this slash of wonder curving through it, and Dean finds himself grinning, adrenaline still lighting him up on the inside, his heart beating too fast and his breath coming short and quick, and he knocks Sam’s hands away and grabs his damp hair and leans in and kisses him, their mouths wet with holy water.

Sam’s mouth--oh, god. He knocks it open and Sam lets him, startled-open and warm, god, he’s so warm. He left twenty messages, starting out curt and getting more desperate, all those dead numbers where Sammy’s voice had been replaced by some phone-company robot, and he didn’t know what to do, where to go. His knuckles are aching, his hands wound up so tight in Sam’s hair and Sam’s breathing open and fast against his mouth, now, saying something, and Dean--Dean can’t--

What'll it take to get it through to you, precious? I'm over this—why do you want to throw it away like this?

Dean walked out of the room and then there was the slam of the Impala’s door, the creak and the weight of the steel audible even through the motel wall, and since then it’s been silent. Sam’s worked his way through most of the six pack he brought, watching the late news broadcast slip over into public access and infomercials, cheap sets and bad bright makeup flickering silently on the old television. The beer hasn’t done much to soothe, though at least it’s given him something to do with his hands. He half-wants to—to fight something. Someone. No point in that, though. Fistfights don’t do anything. They just make you bleed.

Amelia hasn’t shown up. He doesn’t know if he expects her to, or not. Their talk in the bar was hardly a talk at all. It is you, she said, pale in the neon lighting, and before he could say much of anything back she was drawing away, shaking her head, no, no, I’ve got to go, I’ll come—we’ll talk later, okay? Talking too fast, not letting him get a word in edgewise. That’s her tell, how he knows when she’s nervous, and the knowing of that isn’t making the bitter pit in his stomach any less awful. This is a terrible, terrible trick Dean played.

He cracks open the last beer, twiddles the bottle cap. The edge bites gently into his fingers and he presses it a little deeper, watches the indents form and fade, his fingertips going white from the pressure and then red as the blood seeps back under the thin barrier of his skin. Dean might grab another motel room, though Sam doubts he’d stay in this same place. Too close, and when Dean’s feeling pissy he makes his point with distance. Maybe he’s over at the motel out on the 18—or maybe he drove out of Kermit entirely, out of Texas and up into New Mexico, putting a state between them. Or maybe he went back east, back to Louisiana—and back to Benny. Sam clenches the bottlecap tight in his fist, the sharp edge biting just for a moment into the fine sensitive line of where his scar’s nearly faded—and then tosses it, an easy arc across the room into the little trashcan. Bullseye.

Dean won’t talk about it. Won’t tell Sam anything about what really went down, what it was really like, though he’s dropped enough grim clues that Sam knows it must have been awful. He also won’t talk about Benny. Kept him a secret, like it was something dirty—and hell, it is. Sam takes a long swallow of beer, eyes trained unseeing on the fuzzy TV. A vampire. Dean’s new best friend, someone that he trusts, who hasn’t let him down, and that weird queasy fury rises right up the back of Sam’s throat just thinking it. He tries not to think about—if they did anything else. If it wasn’t just escaping together, but—ugh, god. The thought’s vile.

At least with Amelia—he was dead. Dean was dead, or at least gone, permanently. Sam’s never thought cruelly about Lisa. He was gone, and they never thought he’d come back, and he’d made Dean promise, anyway. To move on. It was the promise they made each other, and after everything—Sam kept his promise. He lived. That was the bargain.

Dean won’t talk about Purgatory, won’t say a thing. Nothing real. Sam told the truth, told him that there had been someone else during their long divided year, and all he’d gotten was anger. Fury, bubbling up out of nowhere. Sam tried to be sympathetic, he tried, but it’s been months, Dean’s easy grin gone and a bitter smile left in its place, like somehow it’s Sam’s fault, what happened. Like it was who Sam had known his brother was alive, and waiting, and had gone and hooked up with someone else anyway. Like it was Sam who trusted someone more, who’d loved someone more, as if that could ever be possible. As if there could ever be anything that matched—

His beer’s gone. It’s just past three in the morning, when he checks his watch, and he shoves off the little narrow loveseat, chucks the empty bottle into the trashcan. The neon in the bar beyond the motel is still flashing through the curtains and he’s tempted, for a minute. Just—go get wasted. Try to wipe it all out. It’s a waste of time, though. No matter how hard you try, whatever bitter weeds you’re trying to drown always just grow deeper roots.

He washes his face in the kitchen sink, the cold water a relief against his too-warm skin. He goes to bed. It’s the same weirdly-soft mattress he remembers from a year ago, the same thin overwashed sheets. He tucks a hand behind his head and watches the blue and red take it in turn to color the dim ceiling. After a while, he closes his eyes. At this point, all he can do is wait for morning.